Ossai Miazad

Ossai Miazad is the seventh recipient of the George N. Lindsay Fellowship. She works with the Employment Discrimination Project to challenge the systemic barriers faced by minorities and women in the workplace. Ossai’s project identifies and extends access to employment rights protection to women of color and immigrant women in the low wage workforce, employing a multi-pronged approach focusing on litigation, amicus participation and educational outreach.

Ossai received her undergraduate degree in Sociology from Vassar College. After graduating, she spent one year working as a program assistant for the Urban Institute’s Health Policy Center where she co-authored a study on “State Usage of Medicaid Coverage Options for Aged, Blind, and Disabled People.” She later worked as a grassroots organizer for the Feminist Majority Foundation’s Campaign to Stop Gender Apartheid in Afghanistan. At the Feminist Majority she teamed to develop the U.S. State Department’s then newly approved Afghan Women Scholarship Program (AWSP) for refugee women and expanded support and awareness of the Campaign to Stop Gender Apartheid by speaking at community and policy forums and conferences. Ossai also traveled to Beirut, Lebanon in the Fall of 2001 to volunteer with the Beirut Centre for Human Rights looking specifically into the condition of children’s rights.

Ossai graduated with honors from American University Washington College of Law (“WCL”) in Washington, D.C. in May 2004. She was one of four recipients of the WCL Public Interest/Public Service scholarship awarded to students who demonstrate a commitment to work within underserved communities. As a first and second year law student Ossai served as a staff writer for the Human Rights Brief where she published two full length articles: “The Gender Gap: Treatment of Girls in the U.S. Juvenile Justice System,” and “Transitional Justice in Post-war Afghanistan.” The summer after her first year of law school she worked as a law clerk in the Special Litigation Section of the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice. During this clerkship she contributed to the Section’s work on enforcement of federal civil rights statutes in the area of the civil rights of institutionalized persons and conduct of law enforcement agencies. Ossai also volunteered with the DOJ National Origin Working Group’s “Initiative to Combat the Post-9/11 Discriminatory Backlash.” Ossai spent the summer after her second year of law school working as an associate at the civil rights law firm of Bernabei & Katz.

In law school, Ossai served as a student attorney in the WCL International Human Rights Law Clinic where through her representation, a political refugee in removal proceedings before an immigration court was ultimately granted asylum. As a student attorney in the Clinic she assisted clients in securing employment authorization and public benefits and worked on a case involving the violation of day laborers’ employment rights. Ossai is fluent in Farsi.

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