ALUMNI/AE
PARDIS ZAHEDI, PHD ’07: Unearthing Stories and Building Community With a career that bridges academic rigor and community collaboration, Pardis Zahedi ’07 is redefining what it means to study the past.
She has followed, rather fearlessly, a non-linear career path. Her work has spanned continents and cultures, always grounded in a belief that heritage belongs to the people who live it. Pardis is following her heart in the community-rooted heritage work she is doing, and she is determined to let curiosity guide her. Her personal and professional pursuits are guided by a powerful and deep respect for the people and places that hold history. Pardis’ journey—from a small town in upstate New York to the U.S. Virgin Islands by way of Europe, Central America, and Southeast Asia—has been anything but conventional. “My career has not been linear,” she shares. “That’s because I’ve always followed what I was interested in, and I’ve always had a strong pull toward both the natural and the cultural world.” That sense of purpose, rooted in curiosity and a commitment to community, has defined a career focused as much on relationships as it is on ruins. She traces the roots of that curiosity back to her time at Millbrook. Pardis came to Millbrook as a boarder in her IVth form year. Encouraged by a friend and supported by generous financial aid, she stepped onto campus not knowing quite what to expect. She quickly found a sense of belonging. “I feel like my best memories of Millbrook
about how people live, how they have lived, and how that’s changed. I
are living on a campus with no distractions,” she reflects. “It was an
remember realizing: ‘Getting paid to travel around the world and write
exercise in being a part of a community, really, in the truest sense.”
things about interesting people and interesting cultures—that’s a job?’”
Though she admits she didn’t fully realize her potential as a student then, the seeds of her future were being planted: “A focus on the environment, on community, on small-scale stewardship and public service…all of that started at Millbrook.”
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Zahedi has spent the years since proving that it is. She earned her bachelor’s degree in anthropology and archaeology at SUNY New Paltz after gathering credits at other institutions of higher learning, including Dickinson and Green Mountain colleges. Heritage preservation and
An advanced Anthropology course with faculty member Trip Powers
horticulture were the focus of her early work out of college. She
during her senior year helped unlock her intellectual passion. “That
created a Maya Trail for the Belize Botanic Garden and reconstructed
was the beginning,” she says. “It was just fascinating to me—learning
a traditional Mayan hut in a nine-month job as an ethnoecologist. She
• SPRING 2025