Straddling 2 Worlds

Ramin Rahimian for The Chronicle

Neda Nobari’s path to philanthropy winds back to her adolescence in Iran. At 15, struck by wanderlust, she left her native land for the United States — just, as it turned out, before the 1979 revolution that overthrew the country’s monarchy and established an Islamic government. She stayed in the States with an aunt, graduated from high school in Northern California, and studied computer science in college. Later, she became a business executive and built Bebe clothing, a billion-dollar fashion-store chain, with her husband, Manny Mashouf.

By 2007, after a divorce, she had started her own foundation. Though Iran has a strong culture of charity, it doesn’t feature anything like American philanthropy, including the tax benefits of charitable giving. When Nobari’s accountant recommended she consider giving back, she thought of how she could help people who, like her, straddle two cultures.

‘Under Attack’

Eleven years later, Nobari is one of America’s best-known Iranian-American philanthropists. Her foundation, which has an endowment of $11 million, earmarks much of its giving to social-justice and environmental groups. Among those: Amazon Watch, which works to protect the Amazon rainforest and advocate for the indigenous people of the region.

Increasingly, Nobari is supporting organizations that work to enhance understanding of those who leave their homeland — whether by choice or by force — and live as outsiders in a new country.

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She believes such work is urgent in the United States, pointing to what she believes is rising xenophobia in the wake of the Trump administration’s America First policies and rhetoric. “Embracing the immigrant was once the ethos of the United States,” she says. “But now the immigrant population is under attack. I’ve had no choice but to make immigrants more of a focus of our work.”

Two years ago, Nobari made a $5 million personal gift to San Francisco State University, her alma mater, to form the Center for Iranian Diaspora Studies, believed to be the first academic institution to study Iran’s far-flung expatriates, who number in the millions.

Her foundation supports Iran-focused organizations and promotes the well-being of Iranian-Americans. She wants to help others who have come to America from her home country manage political tensions and feel comfortable with their hyphenated descriptors. Grants go to groups such as the Iranian Scholarship Fund; the Golestan Center, a Northern California educational organization that immerses children in Persian life and language; and the Diaspora Arts Connection, a San Francisco group that aims to form bonds between artists from Iran and elsewhere.

The grant maker’s work extends to other ethnicities. Among other things, it backs film documentaries that spotlight the travails of refugees from Syria, Central America, and elsewhere. One Nobari-supported film, Akicita: The Battle of Standing Rock, focuses on the Native American-led campaign to stop the Dakota Access oil pipeline.

The foundation’s grants go exclusively to groups or individuals in the United States. “It’s hard to tell where money is going overseas,” Nobari explains.

New Purpose

Born in Tehran, Nobari grew up in Abadan, in southwestern Iran. She remembers the generosity of her people, who gave freely and directly to charities that helped people in need. She has criticized American-style philanthropy as an elite exercise. “There are 2,043 billionaires in the world, and none of them has solved systemic challenges like racism or homelessness,” Nobari says. “When I talk about philanthropy, I talk about what it means to be human. In Iran, people see charity as philanthropy. In Sweden, they see philanthropy as volunteering. Here, it’s all about money.”

Nobari came to the States after a trip through Europe with her family at age 13 that sparked a desire to see the world: “I thought about all I needed to see.” When an aunt from California visited Iran, “I begged her to let me go back with her.”

Her American experience soon soured, however. After the revolution, when 52 Americans were taken hostage, students at Nobari’s high school bullied her and other students from Iran. Hateful graffiti urged, among other things, “Camel jockeys, go home.”

Years later, even after achieving the life that many immigrants dream of, she still felt a bit like an outsider in America. Living in Beverly Hills, she grew alienated from the money and materialistic values around her. “I was a single mother raising two teenaged boys. I had to move,” she says.

Her family left Los Angeles in search of a quieter, more meaningful life, landing in rural New Hampshire. While her boys attended high school, Nobari studied for a liberal-arts master’s degree at Dartmouth College. She recalls being transfixed by a course taught by a German professor that focused on the Jewish diaspora but also explored ethnic relocations around the world, as well as the displacement of the LGBT community.

As an immigrant, it resonated with her and gave her a new purpose. “I wanted to find ways to bring people together and show that all the issues we face require intense cooperation and the intermingling of disciplines,” she says. “As a businesswoman, I look for opportunities, ways to fill in what’s missing. Nobody was looking at the meaning of diaspora.”

Today, her philanthropy flows from that awakening. Ultimately she hopes the Center for Iranian Diaspora Studies at San Francisco State will focus on more than just the Iranian perspective.

“Why not look at the Egyptian, Vietnamese, or Cuban diasporas?” she says. “If we could build a bridge between all these communities, we would take a major step toward solving the problems that we are now facing.”