Cultural Mediator
Zoya is a performance-based conflict transformation specialist born on the land of the Ute, Cheyenne, and Arapaho peoples, in what is now called Denver, Colorado. Their life and work have also been shaped by time spent in Texas, Arkansas, and California—regions that inform both their Iranian and Anglo-American heritage. For nearly two decades, they have used participatory performance and arts-based methodologies to support intercultural dialogue, inclusive communication, and community building in seven countries across Europe, East Asia, and North America.
At Build Up, Zoya draws from their experience as a facilitator, cultural mediator, and socially engaged artist to co-create digital peacebuilding and depolarization initiatives that center relationality, embodiment, and multilingual narration. Their work challenges systems of exclusion and nurtures spaces where diverse ways of knowing, feeling, and expressing are valued. Zoya’s practice-as-research is grounded in interdependence and intersectionality, bridging disciplines and identities to support nonviolent approaches to conflict transformation.
