About
From a Tehran classroom to the top of every continent.
Author, speaker, mountain climber, college professor, electrical engineer, and advocate for the empowerment of women — with a UCLA master’s in electrical engineering and seven summits behind her.
The story
It started with one girl's school fees.
Dr. Sara Safari was teaching at California State University, Fullerton when she met the founder of the Empower Nepali Girls foundation. The foundation supports girls in Nepal who are at risk of becoming victims of human trafficking, or of being forced into early marriage. Dr. Sara wanted to help, and decided the way to raise the funds and the attention was to climb Mount Everest.
She had no mountaineering background. She trained anyway. On the mountain in 2015, the Nepal earthquake struck — the disaster later told in the Netflix series Aftershock, in which she is one of the survivors.
She kept climbing. Over the years that followed she stood on the highest point of every continent, becoming the first Iranian in history to complete the Seven Summits, and climbed for seven different organisations working to empower women along the way.
Today she is the founder and president of Climb Your Everest, a nonprofit empowering marginalised young women through educational programmes. In her own words: “I work with organizations that want to develop highly productive teams, that deliver profit, performance and engagement.”
For more than 10 years, she has studied and practiced human development and transformation, and more recently the neuroscientific breakthroughs that confirm and illuminate these principles.
The arc
Engineering, then altitude.
The route from a middle-class Tehran family to the highest point on seven continents, step by step.
- Tehran
An engineer’s daughter, pointed at engineering
Born in Tehran in 1981 into a middle-class family. Her father was an engineer and pushed her towards engineering too. As a teenager she saw a photograph of UCLA’s Royce Hall and fixed on it.
- 2002
Los Angeles
She moved to LA at twenty-one, chasing the university she had seen in a photograph.
- UCLA
Full scholarship, magna cum laude, master’s in electrical engineering
Accepted into UCLA on a full scholarship. She graduated magna cum laude and went straight into UCLA’s electrical engineering master’s programme, finishing in 2009.
- Then
Software, and then the lectern
A spell at a software company, then teaching electrical engineering and computer science at the Southern California Institute of Technology and California State University, Fullerton.
- 2012
The impossible goal
At a personal development seminar the exercise was to name a goal you believed was impossible. She said Everest. She had never climbed anything, had never slept in a sleeping bag, and did not know the difference between base camp and a summit.
- 2015
The earthquake
High on Everest on 25 April, climbing to fund scholarships for girls in Nepal, when a 7.8-magnitude earthquake struck. She survived the avalanche at around 20,000 feet; twenty-two people died at base camp. That earthquake is the subject of the Netflix series Aftershock, in which she is one of the survivors.
- Since
Seven summits, seven causes
She went back to the mountains and stood on the highest point of every continent — the first Iranian in history to do it — climbing each as a fundraiser for a different organisation empowering women and girls.
- Now
Climb Your Everest
Founder and president of the nonprofit, board member and director of development at Empower Nepali Girls, TEDx speaker, author, and keynote speaker for organisations building teams that can climb.
The Seven Summits
The highest peak on every continent.
The set that makes up the Seven Summits — and the route that made her the first Iranian to complete it.
- 01 Everest Asia 8,849 m Nepal / Tibet
- 02 Aconcagua South America 6,961 m Argentina
- 03 Denali North America 6,190 m United States
- 04 Kilimanjaro Africa 5,895 m Tanzania
- 05 Elbrus Europe 5,642 m Russia
- 06 Vinson Antarctica 4,892 m Antarctica
- 07 Carstensz Pyramid Oceania 4,884 m Indonesia
Credentials
The several jobs at once
M.S. Electrical Engineering, UCLA
Admitted on a full scholarship, graduated magna cum laude, and went straight into the master’s programme — a double Bruin.
College professor
Taught electrical engineering and computer science at the Southern California Institute of Technology and at California State University, Fullerton.
Seven Summits
First Iranian in history to climb the highest peak on every continent, having started with no climbing experience at all.
Author
Above the Mountain’s Shadow and Follow My Footsteps, with the proceeds donated to her nonprofit work.
Founder & President
Climb Your Everest — empowering marginalised young women through education.
Board member
Director of development at the Empower Nepali Girls foundation.
Recognition
Awards
- Global Citizen Award — United Nations Association, 2015.
- Outstanding Practice with Broad Impact in the area of women and leadership — International Leadership Association, 2017.
- One of the survivors in the Netflix series Aftershock; her TEDx talk Climb Your Everest given at TEDxIHEParis; her work profiled by National Geographic.
Bring the mountain into your room.
Keynotes and partnerships — start with a conversation about what your people need.