North America, Women and Urban SDGs: An Urban Paradigm Shift Towards Gender Equality
Urban Thinkers Campus (The City We Need NOW!)
Dr. Ehdaie serves as Special Assistant to the Under Secretary for Economic Growth, Energy and the Environment and Senior Advisor on women’s economic issues to the Assistant Secretary of Economic and Business Affairs at the U.S. Department of State. She led in the conception and now the development of the Economic Bureau’s “Providing Opportunities for Women’s Economic Rise” (POWER) initiative. In her role as Special Assistant to the Under Secretary, Dr. Ehdaie works on foreign policy matters pertaining to global health and climate, which entails organizing and shaping the Department’s engagement on economic response to climate change and the global pandemics, including inclusive and equitable infrastructure. Women’s economic empowerment is a critical component to economic development and response to the global pandemic and climate change. In this vein, Dr. Ehdaie supports U.S. policy implementation aimed at fostering gender equality, women’s economic empowerment and equitable response to economic recovery and development. Dr. Ehdaie is a recipient of the Science Policy Fellowship of the American Association for the Advancement of Sciences and the U.S. Department of State Swanee Hunt Award for advancing women in foreign policy. Dr. Ehdaie is a graduate and Rodman Scholar of the University of Virginia, where she obtained her Bachelors, Masters in Biomedical Engineering, and Ph.D. in Civil and Environmental Engineering, and completed her Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.