Zahir Foundation for the Arts
Shabnam Zahir Humphrey, Founder
Shabnam Zahir was born on June 14, 1979 — the same day her father, Ahmad Zahir, Afghanistan's most beloved musician, died under mysterious circumstances. She was one year old when she and her mother, Fakhria, fled Afghanistan as refugees, eventually settling in Alexandria, Virginia, where Shabnam was raised.
Growing up in Alexandria, Shabnam saw her father's musical legacy exploited firsthand — watching others profit from his work while her mother worked two jobs through the early 1980s just to get by. That experience became the foundation of a lifelong mission: to protect Afghan artists' rights, preserve Afghanistan's cultural heritage, and ensure that Ahmad Zahir's legacy is honored by those who rightfully carry it.
In 2014 she began a multi-year advocacy campaign to bring Afghan artists inside international copyright protection, working in close collaboration with the Arts & Entertainment Advocacy Clinic at the Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University, and engaging the Embassy of Afghanistan in Washington, D.C. Afghanistan's accession to the Berne Convention took effect on June 2, 2018. Read more about that work on the Artists' Rights Initiative page.
Shabnam holds a Bachelor's degree in English with a minor in Sociology and is completing a Master's degree at Wake Forest University. She brings more than a decade of professional experience in graphic design, creative writing, digital media and photography to her work as an advocate and as ZFFTA's leader.
She is also Director of ZAHIR, the first documentary film ever made about Ahmad Zahir. The film features Executive Producer Tom Freston, former CEO of Viacom and co-founder of MTV, and is fiscally sponsored by Film Independent. ZAHIR explores Ahmad Zahir's life, his role as a cultural icon of Afghanistan's Golden Era, the circumstances surrounding his death, and his enduring global legacy.
Omar Sultan, Officer
Omar Sultan is one of Afghanistan's most distinguished cultural statesmen and a lifelong champion of Afghan heritage preservation. Raised in Kabul during the 1960s and '70s — the same era that produced Ahmad Zahir's music — he left to study archaeology in Greece at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, where he trained alongside the archaeologist Manolis Andronikos, before dedicating his career to rebuilding Afghanistan's cultural institutions.
He served as Deputy Minister of Information and Culture of Afghanistan, where he led landmark efforts to restore the country's cultural heritage sector after decades of war. He helped secure funding from UNESCO and the Greek government to rebuild the National Museum of Afghanistan, whose collections had been reduced by 70 to 80 percent through looting and destruction, and spearheaded a network of provincial museums in cities including Mazar-i-Sharif, Kandahar, Herat and Bamiyan. His slogan in office was a promise to the Taliban that as long as he lived, he would rebuild what they destroyed. Greece later awarded him the Gold Cross of the Order of Honour for his service to Greek-Afghan relations, and he went on to serve as Afghanistan's Ambassador to Greece.
A former bandmate and close personal friend of Ahmad Zahir, Sultan brings irreplaceable firsthand knowledge of Afghanistan's Golden Era to the ZFFTA board. He has spoken about culture as the one thing that united Afghanistan across tribe and ethnicity, and about the urgency of protecting Afghan oral heritage, folklore and the arts from erasure. He is based in North Carolina.
Negine Khpalwak, Officer
Negine Khpalwak grew up in Kunar province in northeastern Afghanistan, where few girls attended school and fewer still were permitted to study music. She has spoken publicly about the threats she and her father faced from relatives when she made her ambitions known, and about his decision to move with her to Kabul so she could enroll at the Afghanistan National Institute of Music. The family disowned them both.
At ANIM her talent flourished. She sang in the choir, studied sarod — a fretless Hindustani string instrument — for three years before turning to piano, and became the first female sarod player in the Afghan Youth Orchestra, touring the United States in February 2013 with performances at the Kennedy Center and Carnegie Hall. She went on to become lead conductor of Zohra, the first all-female orchestra in Afghan history, which performed at the World Economic Forum in Davos in February 2017.
When the Taliban retook Afghanistan in August 2021, Zohra fell silent and Negine fled. She now lives in Alexandria, Virginia, where she continues studying conducting and piano and performs with the Alexandria Symphony Orchestra. In November 2022, in her first major artistic statement since leaving Afghanistan, she conducted arrangements of Ahmad Zahir's music with the Alexandria Symphony — bringing her full circle to a musician who has inspired her since childhood.
Ask Negine for a quote she's comfortable having published, and confirm her birth year. The one on the page traced back to a U.S. courts source, which suggests it came from an immigration or asylum filing — not something to publish without asking her.
Dr. Ahmad Sarmast, Officer
Dr. Ahmad Naser Sarmast is an Afghan-Australian ethnomusicologist and the founder and director of the Afghanistan National Institute of Music (ANIM). He is widely recognized as one of the most consequential figures in the preservation of Afghan musical heritage.
The son of Ustad Salim Sarmast, a celebrated Afghan composer and conductor, he left Afghanistan in the 1990s during the civil war, earned a master's degree in musicology from the Moscow State Conservatory, and was granted asylum in Australia in 1994. In 2005 he became the first Afghan to earn a Ph.D. in music, from Monash University. He returned to Afghanistan after the fall of the Taliban with a single mission: to restore the musical traditions that had been suppressed and nearly erased. ANIM opened in Kabul on June 20, 2010 — co-educational at a time when boys and girls studying together was virtually unheard of, with half its students orphans and street children, each receiving a monthly stipend.
In 2013 ANIM's Afghan Youth Orchestra made its U.S. debut at the Kennedy Center and Carnegie Hall. In December 2014 a suicide bomber attacked a student concert in Kabul, killing an audience member and injuring Dr. Sarmast, who lost part of his hearing. He returned to the school. In 2017 Zohra, ANIM's all-female orchestra, performed at the World Economic Forum in Davos, and in 2018 Dr. Sarmast and ANIM received the Polar Music Prize.
When the Taliban retook Kabul in August 2021, ANIM's campus was seized, its instruments abandoned and its accounts frozen. Over five airlifts that autumn, Dr. Sarmast led the evacuation of 273 students, faculty, staff and family members out of Afghanistan — the largest rescue of a self-contained Afghan community after the takeover. The school reestablished itself in Portugal, first in Lisbon and now in Braga, where it continues to teach. In 2022 Juilliard awarded him an honorary doctorate. In 2024 the Afghan Youth Orchestra and Zohra returned to Carnegie Hall and the Kennedy Center, their first U.S. performances since the exile.
As a ZFFTA board member, Dr. Sarmast brings scholarly expertise, institutional leadership, and direct experience of what it costs to keep a musical tradition alive under a government determined to end it.
Omaid Sharifi, Officer
Omaid Sharifi is a patron of the arts, curator and President at ArtLords, Wartists and Rebel Art Cafe. ArtLords is a grassroots movement of artists and volunteers motivated by the desire to pave the way for social transformation and behavioral change through employing the soft power of art and culture as a non-intrusive approach.
Mr. Sharifi is a Millennium Leadership Fellow with Atlantic Council, Asia Society 21 and American Foreign Relations Council/Rumsfeld Fellow. Mr. Sharifi is Winner of Best Animation for Peace and Tolerance Award from MiSK-UNDP Youth Forum, Anti-Corruption Excellence Award Winner from Ban Ki-Moon and Emir of Qatar and Afghanistan’s Social Media Award Winner for encouraging offline action and European Union Innovation Award for Fighting Corruption in 2017, 2016 and 2015 respectively. He co-founded the famous “I See You” campaign against corruption, Hamdeli (Empathy) Network for bringing joy to Afghan citizens and Sela Foundation in Afghanistan. Mr. Sharifi is U.S. State Department International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP) alumni.
Mr. Sharifi started as a kid selling cookies and cigarettes in the streets of Kabul when he was only 12, he was part of the small team and aide to President Mohammad Ashraf Ghani at Transition Coordination Commission and a Program Manager for Tawanmandi – a multi-million-dollar challenge fund for strengthening civil society in Afghanistan.
Mejgan Massoumi, Officer
Dr. Mejgan Massoumi received her Ph.D. in History from Stanford University, where she is currently a Teaching Fellow in the Civic, Liberal, and Global Education program. Her work takes up questions of technology and citizenship, transnationalism and the fluidity of identity, gender and performance, and critical approaches to global history, postcolonial studies and sensory history. She is at work on her first book, tentatively titled The Sounds of Kabul: Radio and the Politics of Popular Culture in Modern Afghanistan, 1960–79.
Having earned earlier degrees in Architecture (B.A.) and City Planning (M.C.P.) from the University of California, Berkeley, her scholarship rests on a cross-cultural and interdisciplinary foundation — a study of the past informed by the sounds broadcast in and beyond the built environment.
As a scholar, educator, refugee and immigrant, she is committed to advancing equity and inclusion within academia through her advocacy and through teaching and scholarship focused on the experiences of marginalized peoples, places and cultures.
Adam Dehsabzi, Project Manager + Archivist
Adam is a Research Associate at the Cato Institute, where his work focuses on U.S. foreign policy, Middle Eastern security affairs, transatlantic relations, and nationalism. He holds a degree in International Relations from the University of Chicago and brings this analytical background to his role as Archival and Associate Producer for the production of Ahmad Zahir's documentary. He draws on his subject-matter expertise to navigate the complex and fragmented archival landscape of pre-war Afghanistan. A first-generation Afghan-Australian based in Washington DC, Adam brings both a scholarly and personal perspective to the project. This is his debut in film production:ZAHIR.
Yalda Sarwar, Officer
Yalda is an expert on issues of Afghanistan, Afghan politics, human rights, women's rights, poetry, humanitarian work, community organizing, and advocacy. She is an Afghan-Canadian journalist, poet, human rights advocate, and community organizer. She is currently working with young leaders on a campaign called Canadian Campaign for Afghan Peace. She wears multiple hats with this campaign; including that of a Media Spokesperson, and Committee Adviser Researcher. She also acts as a liaison with Afghans on the ground and internationally, as the Afghanistan crisis continue to cost Afghans, Afghan-Canadians, and the world.
She has been actively aware of the political and humanitarian conflicts around the world, including those in Canada and her homeland Afghanistan. She is a 2021 Daughters of the Vote delegate and has been involved politically in Canada. She has also written and appeared on national and international media speaking about Canada and Afghanistan. She has also tirelessly reported about both nations. Her media experience includes working with CBC News Toronto, and multiple News networks in Afghanistan.
Yalda's lived experience includes being born in Afghanistan, experiencing the Afghan war firsthand, and being active, in politics and in journalism, both in Canada and globally.
Sam French, Film + Media
An Oscar-nominated filmmaker, Sam spent five years living and working in Afghanistan, where he produced and directed documentaries for the UN, NGOs, aid organizations, and the media, including HBO, BBC, CNN, Channel 4 News and Al Jazeera. He wrote and directed the Academy Award nominated short film “Buzkashi Boys,” which was the first narrative film since 2001 to be filmed entirely on location in Afghanistan.
Sam is back in Los Angeles and is writing and developing both narrative and documentary feature film projects. Sam believes in the power of storytelling to connect people across different cultures, and that if we lift up our voices and share our stories we can change the world.
Dr. Thomas E. Gouttierre , Officer
Dr. Thomas E. Gouttierre served as Dean of International Studies and Programs at the University of Nebraska at Omaha and as Director of its Center for Afghanistan Studies from 1974 until his retirement in 2015. He is widely regarded as one of the leading Western authorities on Afghanistan and U.S.-Afghan relations.
Born in Maumee, Ohio, he earned his B.A. and M.A. from Bowling Green State University and holds four honorary doctorates. Before taking up his position in Nebraska he lived and worked in Afghanistan for a decade, from 1964 to 1974, serving as a Peace Corps volunteer, a Fulbright fellow, executive director of the Fulbright Foundation, and head coach of the Afghan National Basketball Team. In 1996 and 1997 he was seconded by the U.S. State Department to serve as Senior Political Affairs Officer on the United Nations mission to Afghanistan. He received the UNO Chancellor's Medal in 1987.
He speaks, reads and writes Dari, Farsi and Tajik Persian, co-authored the two-volume language textbook Dari for Foreigners, and writes original Dari poetry. He has published widely on Afghan society, culture and politics and has spent decades in dialogue on Central Asian cultures and conflicts.