Mosaic Fellow
Sahar Fathi
Areas of Expertise: Poverty, Race and Social Justice, Immigrant and Refugee Integration
Sahar Fathi is the policy director for the Washington State Attorney General’s Office. Previously, she served as a senior legislative analyst on Central Staff at King County, the division director for external relations and the leadership development division director at the Department of Neighborhoods (DON) at the City of Seattle. Prior to that she served as the policy, strategy, and programs lead for the Seattle Office of Immigrant and Refugee Affairs, as a legislative aide to Seattle Councilmember Mike O'Brien, and as a legal clerk for the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. Sahar graduated from the University of Washington Law School and is a member of the New York bar. She also earned a master's in International Studies from the University of Washington, and graduated cum laude from the University of Southern California with a dual B.A. in French and International Relations. Sahar also attended the Sorbonne Université and received a diploma in International and European Law from the Université Jean-Moulin in 2008.
Sahar has worked on immigrant and refugee issues for 15 years, internationally and nationally. Sahar was named one of “The Smartest People in Seattle Politics” by The Stranger in 2013 and was named one of “Seattle’s Smartest Global Women” by The Seattle Globalist in 2014. In 2014 she received a "Rising Star" award from the Northwest Asian Weekly and received national recognition in 2015 for her program, the Refugee Women's Institute. She has served as adjunct faculty at both Seattle University and the University of Washington School of Law.
Sahar is a past president and co-founder of the Middle Eastern Legal Association of Washington, as well as the founder of its Legal Clinic – the first Middle Eastern Legal Clinic in the country. She is a current board member of One America Votes and a past board member for the ACLU, the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project, and the UNA – USA. Sahar is fluent in Farsi and French and has been published in the Seattle Journal for Social Justice, the Seattle Journal of Environmental Law, the Gonzaga Law Review and The Routledge Handbook of Translation and Activism.