2020 Speakers

Get on the Bus Virtual Speakers Panel is happening at 12 noon on May 15, here: 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J5i4UnrW6g8

Pema Doma: Pema currently serves as the Campaigns Director for Students for a Free Tibet (SFT). She began her social justice journey in 2010 as a youth community organizer with Boston Mobilization, working in solidarity for racial, economic, and environmental justice campaigns. In 2014, Pema spent 7 months teaching English at the Tibetan Children’s Village Vocational Training Center in Selaqui, India, where she enjoyed getting to know her students and watching cricket. Pema’s first official role within the Tibetan Freedom Movement was in 2016 as a Campaigns Intern for SFT International in New York. After her internship, Pema co-founded a Students for a Free Tibet chapter at her university and served as the chapter’s first President. As an undergraduate student, Pema also interned with US Congressman Jim McGovern and US Senator Elizabeth Warren. In addition to her work with SFT, Pema also spends her time advocating for a Tibetan flag emoji #inserttibetanfla, and has an appreciation for the Boston Celtics.
Zumretay Arkin: Zumretay is the Program and Advocacy Manager at the World Uyghur Congress, an umbrella organization based in Munich, Germany, that advocates for Uyghur human rights. She recently graduated from University Laval with a Bachelor of Laws (LL.B.) and graduated with a Bachelors in International Relations from the University of Montreal, in 2016. She is a Uyghur-Canadian activist who continually advocates for the respect of human rights for Uyghurs. She was born in Urumqi, and immigrated to Montreal, Canada at the age of 10, with her family. She got involved in the cause, after witnessing the Urumqi Uprising in July 2009, when she was there for the summer holidays. She is a fervent believer in justice and human rights. She has been engaged in advocacy work at the UN and calling on different UN bodies to take urgent action regarding the repression of Uyghurs in East Turkistan.
Gissou Nia (@GissouNia) is a human rights lawyer and nonresident fellow with Middle East Programs at the Atlantic Council. She currently leads an effort to build a strategic litigation program on the Middle East and North Africa, with an initial focus on Iran. She serves as board chair of the Iran Human Rights Documentation Center where she is helping develop and oversee the group’s human rights advocacy and legal programs, which seek to promote accountability, respect for human rights and the rule of law in Iran. She previously served as the Executive Director for the group, and as the Deputy Director of the Center for Human Rights in Iran. She started her career in The Hague, where she worked on war crimes and crimes against humanity trials at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia and the International Criminal Court.
Ahed Festuk is an activist from Aleppo, Syria who lived in the city's rebel-held side until late November 2015. She was one of the pioneer women demonstrators, and when the war erupted, she worked as a paramedic on the front lines. Ahed later joined various organizations to do relief and development work, and became a member of the ancillary staff of Aleppo local council. ​She served as a hostile environment/first aid trainer inside Aleppo. She sought asylum in the United States in 2016. Now, Ahed works for the Multifaith Alliance for Syrian Refugees and is a member of the Syrian Women's Political Movement.
Nazia Shaheed, Activist/Musician

Nazia Shaheed is Amnesty International member and a rising third-year student at New Jersey Institute of Technology, majoring in Biology and minoring in History. She is on a premed track, and hopes to go to medical school after college. Nazia also volunteers as an EMT and works as an Emergency Department physician scribe at Hackensack University Medical Center in NJ.

In her own words:
"I have been a part of Amnesty International since my freshman year of high school. When I first heard about Amnesty at my school, it was an advertisement for a trip to Boston for the Northeast Regional Conference. Being a high school freshman, I joined the club for the mere reason to go on a trip to Boston. Little did I know that this experience would impact the rest of my time in high school and carry with me to college. I became very much involved in high school and, in my sophomore year, was elected president of our Amnesty club."

"I worked with other members to raise awareness about Amnesty in the school and what we do. We held benefit concerts on campus in collaboration with a club that I founded with one of my best friends called MERACL (Middle Eastern Relief And Care Liaison). We also held bake sales and a movie night. Through our fundraisers, our clubs were able to raise a little over $2000 which we donated to UNHCR for refugee relief. We also held a winter clothing drive for refugees where we collected donations from our peers and classmates to be sent to charities in the Middle East. Most of our actions focused on refugees and migrants since most of our club members were very vocal about their feelings towards these issues."

"One of my friends and I planned to perform at GOTB as sort our last performance together before we both went off to college. Unfortunately, she couldn’t make it because she had a driver’s test. So, I went on by myself and performed some of my favorites from the Civil Rights Era of the 1960s. These songs helped to unify a nation struggling with segregation and race conflicts back then so, I figured why not sing them to bring people together now, at this divisive time? I didn’t expect people to start singing along but, when they did, it nearly brought tears to my eyes. That was one of the best moments of my life and it made me thankful that I’m part of Amnesty International."
Alireza Azizi
​
Alireza Azizi has been active in the field of human rights for over thirty years. He has been a member of the Amnesty International USA Middle East Coordination group for the past 20 years, covering the United Arab Emirates, Yemen, and Qatar. He has served on the governing boards of various NGOs. From 2000 to 2006, Alireza served as a member of AIUSA board of directors. In 2007, he was a member of the U.S delegation to the AI International Council Meeting, the highest decision-making body of Amnesty International. He also has participated in three Amnesty International research missions to Yemen. As a human rights activist, Alireza has given many talks, interviews, and trainings on various human rights topics.

Alireza's 2020 Get on the Bus slides are posted here:
​https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1GXR4TcS_hIfHrtOzjHhzdlhBhoobqI3S_qUGXwAeKwc/edit?usp=sharing
​Brannavy Jeyasundaram: Operations Officer, People for Equality and Relief in Lanka (PEARL).

Brannavy Jeyasundaram is an Eelam Tamil writer and classically trained Bharatanatyam dancer. Presently, she works as the Operations Officer at People for Equality And Relief in Lanka (PEARL) where she serves to engage larger audiences with their critical human rights work concerning the Tamil homeland. Her involvement in the Tamil liberation struggle began in 2018 after helping organize the Solidarity for Tamil Families of the Disappeared protest in Toronto. Since then, she has helped raise awareness and action on issues such as impunity, enforced disappearances, military occupation, land grabs, and security sector reform in Sri Lanka. Brannavy also volunteers as the Community Connector at the Healing Arts Dinner Circle, an arts-based programming initiative by Tamil Archive Project. She holds an Honors Bachelor of Science and Minor in French Studies from York University and is an alumnus of the Emerging Arts Critic Program offered by the National Ballet of Canada. Her writing exploring Eelam Tamil strife and survival can be found in The Jacobin, NOW Toronto, HuffPost, and Tamil Guardian.
April Allderdice: Friend of Ahmed Monsoor and CEO of MicroEnergy Credits.

April Allderdice is the founder and co-admin of the Friends of Ahmed Mansoor Facebook page. April is a friend of Ahmed Mansoor from his grad school days at the University of Colorado Boulder in the late 1990s. Having fallen out of touch, April reconnected with Ahmed after he was released from prison in 2011. He told her, “I thought you would be protesting for me at the Embassy”, and she was ashamed that she hadn’t even known of his imprisonment.  When he was arrested again in 2017, she was determined to try to help get his story out. Through the Friends of Ahmed Mansoor Facebook page she has met an international network of people working for his release. As a personal friend, she can vouch for his courage, humility, generosity and integrity.

​​April is also the co-founder and CEO of MicroEnergy Credits, a Seattle-based company that links microentrepreneurs to the carbon markets when they take loans for clean energy. Using cloud technology MicroEnergy Credits aggregates carbon offsets from the clients of Microfinance Institutions and sells them to the carbon markets, enabling better and cleaner energy choices for the market at the bottom of the pyramid. April is an alumni of McKinsey and Company, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, Columbia Business School and Wesleyan University.  In the late 1990s, as a Fulbright Scholar, Allderdice helped initiate an innovative enterprise at Grameen Shakti, a sister organization of the Grameen Bank, which has sold over five milion solar home systems to its customers in Bangladesh. MicroEnergy Credits is currently working with fifteen microfinance institutions in four countries globally.  As a result of MEC’s program, over 4 million households have already adopted clean energy technologies.
Frances Hui, Hong Kong activist

Frances Hui is journalist who focuses her reporting on Hong Kong-related topics, primarily feature stories about identity complexity and local cultures of Hong Kong. She went to the U.S. for her study in journalism and political science in 2016, but retains a strong tie to her hometown, Hong Kong. Her column "I am from Hong Kong, not China" was a widespread piece across the globe and was featured by international media outlets, such as The Washington Post, The New York Times, BBC, and The Boston Globe. Despite receiving death threats and hateful comments, she has continued to gather forces of Hongkongers in Boston since June with more than 10 related rallies and events in raising awareness for the current movement in Hong Kong.