About Ardeshir Pezeshk
Senior Data Manager at Hack Diversity
Ardeshir joined the ILI board in November, 2024. He was raised in an immigrant household in southern California, immersed in Iranian culture, and credits his multicultural upbringing for his desire to experience life in other countries. This included volunteering in India for several months and traversing overland through Turkey on the way to Iran. As a result of his background and many travels, Ardeshir saw first hand the powerful impact of international and intercultural exchanges and developed a commitment to encourage understanding of one another within and across cultures, dovetailing with ILI’s core mission.
While “living happily within spreadsheets”, Ardeshir excels in putting his remarkable skills in building large-scale data sets to good use in practical applications, transforming the data into strategic insights, presenting findings to diverse audiences and bringing visions and goals to fruition. As one example, Ardeshir built an original dataset with more than 200,000 observations to assess the extent to which international humanitarian law protects civilians in armed conflict. His goal is to use his skills in collaboration with other board members and staff to the benefit of ILI’s operations.
Ardeshir holds degrees in political science: a BA from San Francisco State University (2007), and an MA from San Diego State University (2011). He also advanced to PHD candidacy at the University of Massachusetts Amherst (2020) and an ‘All but Dissertation’ (ABD) at the University.