BOD: Lale’ Welsh (Shahparaki), Executive Director

Lale’ Welsh (nee’ Shahparaki) was born in the UK to an English Mother and a Persian Father, but spent most of her childhood in pre-revolution Tehran. In 1976 the family moved back to London where she finished high school and then moved to the US for college in the early 80’s.

Both her under-grad in Radio, Television and Film Production, and post-graduate work in American Studies were completed at California State University. In addition to an initial stint in casting at Paramount, Lale’ successfully worked in corporate Marketing & Advertising for over 15 years, most recently as VP, at Monster and Yellowpages.com (ATT).

She took a sabbatical in early 2006 in order to fulfill her long-time goal of launching a foundation for the arts. As co-founder of BeyondPersia.org the goal of exploring and promoting the organic fusion of Eastern and Western art and culture among Iranian Diaspora has become a reality.

One of the primary goals is to help satisfy a hunger for an underserved demographic; both for the “hyphenated-Iranian” artists who produce this bi-cultural art, as well as for an ever widening pool of patrons who embrace it, and want to see it taken seriously. She currently lives in California with her two daughters, between Los Angeles and San Francisco.

BOD: Amir Salamat, President, Sr. Curator

Amir Salamat was born in Tehran. He attended Alborz High School and later Sharif (Arya-Mehr) University in Tehran, where he studied structural engineering.  He moved to the US in 1978.  He finished his undergraduate in Portland, Oregon and his masters degree in San Diego, California.  He moved to San Francisco in 1982 and has lived in Bay Area ever since with his two children.  After working for several engineering firms in the bay area, he started his own firm and has worked on projects such as nickelodeon theme park in Santa Clara, numerous projects for Kaiser Permanente, and many other commercial and residential projects since 1991.

Amir has had several art shows around US and was involved in the first two Beyond Persia exhibits at Gallery One in San Francisco.  Realizing a need for the promotion of the art among Iranian Diaspora he co-founded Beyond Persia with Lale’ Shahparaki Welsh in 2006 and serves as its President and Art Curator.

BOD: Bruce Behrouz Bahmani, Marketing Director

Bruce is a marketing Director at Beyond Persia and is part of our stellar and experienced Marketing team. Having worked at some of the Bay Area’s premier companies such as Oracle, Businessland, Nortel Networks, Bruce brings a wealth of corporate marketing, ad campaign development, and communications to the table. Bruce also managed the Northern California San Francisco offices of Artisan Creative, a premier creative services firm during the dot com heyday. In 2001 Bruce started his own Guerrilla Marketing firm called bCubed New Marketing with the express purpose of enabling small to medium sized businesses benefit from full service marketing.

You may know Bruce as one of the Iranian.com’s most widely read writers. Bruce first began to write about the Iranian-American experience shortly after his father died in 1992, and is one the Iranian community’s favorite commentators.  Known for his wit and easy to read style, Bruce brings a smile to many people’s faces every day. One of Bruce’s favorite hobbies is music and he has a passion for alternative Iranian popular music and is a driving force in the evolution of Iranian music and culture. You can hear Bruce and his commentary each month on our podcast, Beyond Persia Audio Magazine.

BOD: Kassra P. Nassiri, Director and General Counsel

Kassra P. Nassiri is a Director and General Counsel for Beyond Persia. Previously, Mr. Nassiri was General Counsel to a Muti Million dollar Financial Services Company, and prior to that, practiced litigation at Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, the leading securities class-action defense firm in the country. At Wilson Sonsini, he successfully defended Fortune 500 companies in shareholder class action lawsuits, derivative lawsuits, and SEC investigations.
Mr. Nassiri earned his law degree from Harvard Law School. While in law school, Mr. Nassiri taught economics courses at Harvard College. He earned his master’s degree in economics from Stanford University, where he was awarded the Stanford Graduate Fellowship. He earned his bachelor’s degree from the University of California, Berkeley, where he was a member of Phi Beta Kappa. Mr. Nassiri lives in San Francisco and is an avid musician, and enthusiastic patron of the arts.

BOD: Sabereh Kashi, Director of video productions

Sabereh Kashi started her career as a journalist, film critic and writer in Iran. She wrote film reviews and articles for Film Monthly, Donyaye-Tasvir, Zanan, Azad Newspaper, and other publications. In 1991, she was the top student nation-wide in the national entrance examination to Art universities in Iran. She received her bachelor’s in Fine Arts and her master’s in Art Studies from the Faculty of Fine Arts at the University of Tehran. She made three short films in Iran including the 35 mm documentary, Lalezar Street (2000) which was a selection of Fajr International Film Festival in 2001.

She moved to Canada in 2001 and studied Advanced Television and Film in Sheridan Institute for Advanced Learning and Technology. In the school she further honed her filmmaking skills and learned about various aspects of film and TV production in the world of digital and HD technologies. Her passion for documentaries and visual story telling led her to edit the award winning documentary Calling Nate (2003), the coming of age story of the 19 year old Nadia Hulosku in Toronto. The documentary was a selection of Hot Docs International Documentary Festival in 2004 and was well received in many film festivals worldwide.

ABOUT BEYOND PERSIA

Beyond Persia is a self funded, self sustaining non-profit organization dedicated to the exposure of contemporary Persian culture, outside the borders of Iran.  In our short tenure, we have had the great pleasure of promoting an impressive coterie of Iranian artists, filmmakers and musicians by putting on significant Art Exhibits at high profile galleries and theaters, like Gallery One, Sundance Theaters, the Palace of Fine Arts, and concerts at “best of breed” venues across the US, and soon, internationally.  We are proud to have exposed the work of over 100 emerging Iranian artists, and to have produced the first Iranian Rock concert in the world, at the legendary Great American Music Hall in SF, for Kiosk’s (world premier) who co-headlined with the Abjeez, an amazing girl band from Iran, by way of Sweden. See their video.  Our recent sold-out Concert, Solh-Fest, was a fundraiser for peace (Agape Foundation) in which we introduced Piano virtuoso Arjang Rad, and traditional crooner, Hamed Nikpay to the world at large.  For a more comprehensive list of our family of artists and clients, please visit our site.  With your encouragement, we look forward to forging ahead with this imprortant mission designed to foster cross cultural understanding via the arts.

MISSION STATEMENT

Our mission is “to combine Persian Culture with American business accumen for a bi-cultural upgrade”.

We are a non-profit organization under Welsh & Associates, LLC, a Nevada limited liability corporation, founded in 2006.
Our goal is build a social Network built around Iranian American/ex-patriot Artists living anywhere outside of their homeland. Free to the artists and general public, we hope to support our efforts through quality Art Exhibits, Concerts, Film Festivals, event management and the benevolence of those who care to see art thrive in our new culture.
The charter member artists are: Shiva Pakdel, Amir Salamat, Jaleh Etemad, Shahla Motamedi, Simin Meykadeh, Sepahram Khamjani, and Mina Ghaziani who paid and participated in our 1st BeyondPersia art exhibit in San Francisco Dec. 2006.