Chapter four
Research and Policy
Data, lived experience, and the people policy is about
Policy failure is rarely about intent. It is about the distance between what institutions write and what communities actually experience. Obaid
When I was a kid in war-torn Afghanistan, I would turn on my family's old black-and-white Sharp TV and watch President Hamid Karzai meet officials from other countries. They sat in big rooms and talked about policies that would decide our schools, our safety, and our future. Everyone I knew lived with those decisions, and none of us were in the room. I wanted to do something about it.
That boy is still in me. Today, my research and analysis are shaped directly by my lived experience as a first-generation student, a person of color, a Muslim, and an immigrant who came here with nothing to start with. I don't study newcomers from a distance. I am one.
Why my work centers newcomers
I want every newcomer to know that their voice matters, no matter how the media portrays them. I have been called a desert dweller. I know what it feels like when the story told about you is not your story.
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"I bet all you know is guns"
A few years ago, I went to a leadership retreat built around community bonding. I cooked an Afghan meal for everyone, and we ate together. Later, we went swimming, which was the fun part of the trip. I mentioned that I wasn't very good at swimming, and a colleague laughed and said, "I bet all you know is guns."
I don't think she meant to hurt me. It was simply all she had ever been shown about people like me: guns and explosions on the news. Never the families, the poets, the teachers, or the meal I had just cooked for her.
The media decides what many people believe about newcomers. Research and policy decide what happens to them. I want newcomers in both rooms.
How I use data
I use coding, databases, trend analysis, and policy tracking to inform newcomers of their rights, and of how to exercise them fully. Here is how I work:
Start with the question that matters to people. Not what is easy to measure, but what decides whether a policy works in someone's life.
Build the picture with data. I clean, analyze, and model survey, legal, and voter data in Python and R, and build databases and trackers that follow policy shifts over time.
Test it against lived experience. Interviews, fieldwork, and community dialogue show where the numbers and the reality disagree, and why.
Translate it into plain language. Briefs, memos, and guides written so that decision-makers can act on them, and newcomers can use them, the same day.
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What I research and write about
Migration
How immigrants, refugees, and asylum seekers settle, and the policies that open or close the doors to school, work, and belonging.
Justice
Who the system protects, who it leaves out, and how rights on paper become rights in practice.
Democracy
How institutions earn trust, and what happens to a country when they lose it.
Leadership
What it takes to lead across cultures, languages, and lived experiences, and to bring others along.
Civic engagement
Who votes, who does not, and how to make democracy meaningful for young people and newcomers.
International security and diplomacy
Fragile and conflict-affected states, mediation, and how political settlements become institutions that hold.
Economic modeling and policy
Economic mobility, development, and the tradeoffs behind the policies that shape them, measured with real data.
Peacebuilding and conflict resolution
How divided communities find a way back to each other, from Seeds of Peace to contested history in the U.S.
Ethics of public policy
Who benefits, who pays, and who decides. A subject I help teach as a teaching assistant at Columbia University.
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Where I have done this work
Columbia University, SIPA
Master of International Affairs. Program assistant for International Security and Diplomacy, and teaching assistant for Ethics in Public Policy, where I graded graduate policy memos and held office hours.
Beyond Conflict
Research consultant. Created the first-ever U.S. polarization index, and led legal and policy research across all 50 states and five U.S. territories on how they protect Indigenous and cultural monuments.
Ignite Utah
Director of data strategy and operations. Research on Gen Z voting behavior, Utah turnout, and youth civic engagement, with memos and donor briefings that turn data into decisions ahead of the 2026 elections.
Promise Partnership Utah
Partnership director of policy and communities. Policy analysis, bill tracking, legislative fact sheets, and testimony, and work with school districts to turn findings into fairer practice for students and families.
Community research
Interviews and root cause analysis on the economic mobility of, and challenges facing, Afghan immigrant communities in Utah.
Government, diplomacy, and campaigns
Policy research with Utah Global Diplomacy and the Westminster Global Peace Office, and policy research for the Utah Democratic Party and a congressional campaign.
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Selected work
Research and briefs
- The first-ever U.S. polarization indexBuilt for use in policy and legal frameworks nationwide. Beyond Conflict, pending publication.
- Who Decides What a Place RemembersA policy brief on the gaps in state laws and policies that protect Indigenous and cultural monuments, the places that speak to the rich and diverse history of the U.S. Beyond Conflict, pending publication.
- What Gen Z wants prioritizedA data presentation to Utah's District 1 congressional candidates, and the panel I moderated. Ignite Utah, 2026.
- Economic mobility in Utah's Afghan communityCommunity interviews and root cause analysis, 2022.
Writing and conversation
- A Climate Solution Everyone Can SupportThe Salt Lake Tribune, 2020. It led to a conversation with Senator Romney.
- No Justice, No PeaceWestminster Review, 2021
- Was the War in Afghanistan Worth It?An interview in The Red and Black, 2021
- Born in War, Not a Product of WarWestminster Review, 2019
Briefs that are not yet public are available on request.
Where this is going
I want to work in international policy on fragile and conflict-affected states, in a multilateral setting like the United Nations, contributing to policy design, negotiation, and implementation. In the long term, I hope to help rebuild institutions in Afghanistan that are credible, inclusive, and built to last.
The boy in front of the Sharp TV wanted a seat in the room. Now I want to pull up chairs for everyone else, so that policy finally listens to the people who live its consequences.
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