Dr. Sakena Yacoobi - barlowbooks

Sakena Yacoobi was born in Herat, Afghanistan. Though her father was illiterate, he promoted her education, and with the help of an American Peace Corps volunteer, she attended college in the U.S, and earned a masters degrees in public health. In the 1990s, she worked for the International Rescue Committee in Pakistan, where she helped increase the number of Afghan refugee girls in schools from 3,000 to 15,000. During the mid-1990s, with the Taliban in power and international support cut for education and health programs in Afghanistan, Yacoobi was determined to support education, job training and health programs there. She founded the Afghan Institute of Learning (AIL) in 1995 to help Afghan women get the health and schooling they needed.

Today, Yacoobi is a respected expert in the fields of girls’ education, health, refugees, and women’s empowerment, and she often speaks at the United Nations, at Stanford, Oxford, and other universities. She has seven honorary doctorates from prestigious U.S. universities, including Princeton. She has won numerous prizes and has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.