or stereotyped by my gender, my economic background, my nationality or my beliefs." Personal profile Saeed was born on 3 June 1959, in Lahore, Pakistan. She received most of her schooling and early college education in Peshawar, Pakistan where she graduated from the University of Peshawar with a BS in Home Economics as the University Gold Medalist for Academic Excellence in 1979. As a result of her academic achievements, she received a Quaid-e-Azam Overseas Educational Award and spent 8 years at the University of Minnesota, where she earned an MS in design and a doctorate in education. She received additional funding from the Ethel L. Parker International Fellowship Award of the American Home Economics Association for her doctoral research. Saeed returned to her native land immediately after completing her degrees, but has returned to Minneapolis on several occasions as a visiting lecturer and to receive a Distinguished International Alumni Award in 1998 and the International Leadership Award in 2008, both presented by the University of Minnesota in recognition of her contributions to the field of education and the women’s movement in Pakistan. The government of Japan named Saeed as one of seven Asian Leadership Fellows for 2010. She attended the Fellowship program in Tokyo from September to November 2010 and gave lectures at numerous Japanese universities and wrote about her experiences on her return. Saeed was awarded the 2012 Battle of Crete Award by the Oxi Day Foundation for 'courageous action for freedom and democracy' based on her decade-long struggle for the criminalisation of sexual harassment in Pakistan. She served as the director of Mehergarh: A Center for Learning where she headed its programs on youth, gender and human rights from 2004 until 2012. She remains as an informal advisor. Between September 2012 and February 2015, Saeed was a Fellow at the US National Endowment for Democracy (DC), Draper-Hills Fellow at Stanford University (California), Visiting Fellow at George Mason University (Virginia) and Pakistan Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars (DC) under the Smithsonian Institution. She lives in Sri Lanka with her husband, Paul Lundberg, whom she met in 1995 when they were both working in the United Nations in Pakistan. They have also lived together in Manila and Cairo. She is one of the very few Pakistani women of her generation who has learned how to SCUBA dive and has dived in Pakistan, the Bahamas, the Mergui