Growing up in Pennsylvania, Mona was acutely aware of the sacrifices her parents had made to give her opportunities not afforded girls in their native Iran. Upon arriving to the US her parents worked minimum wage jobs with no health benefits. Seeing them struggle, Mona chose her path: to help the disadvantaged get access to legal and health care.
While at Franklin and Marshall (F&M), Mona began realizing this goal through weekly visits to a maximum-security prison, where she and a partner interviewed asylum seekers from Sudan and Cote d'Ivoire. The two subsequently launched the AID Project, an online database human rights reports aimed at assisting future immigration cases.
Knowing how helpful tax credits had been to her parents, Mona founded the F&M Volunteer Income Tax Assistance (VITA) program, in which students volunteered to help members of the local community with the tax returns. Mona also designed and launched the ONE Goal, a sports-based public health education program in South Africa.
In 2011, Mona traveled to Ireland as a George J. Mitchell scholar, doing a Master of Science in Equality Studies at University College Dublin. In 2017 she completed her medical training as a global scholar at Penn State College of Medicine. Currently, she is completing her ophthalmology residency training at Penn State Health Milton S. Hershey Medical Center. Mona plans to continue her work in the advancement of medical education and international eye care.
