Sahar Fathi is the Policy Director for the Washington State Attorney General’s Office. Previously, she served as a Senior Legislative Analyst on Central Staff at King County, the Division Director for External Relations and the Leadership Development Division Director at the Department of Neighborhoods (DON) at the City of Seattle. Prior to that she served as the Policy, Strategy, and Programs Lead for the Seattle Office of Immigrant and Refugee Affairs, as a legislative aide to Seattle Councilmember Mike O’Brien, and as a legal clerk for the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. Sahar graduated from the University of Washington Law School and is a member of the New York bar. She earned a Masters in International Studies from the University of Washington, and graduated cum laude from the University of Southern California with a dual Bachelor of Arts in French and International Relations. Sahar also attended the Sorbonne Université and received a diploma in International and European Law from the Université Jean-Moulin in 2008.

Sahar has worked on policy issues for 15 years, internationally and nationally. Sahar was named one of “The Smartest People in Seattle Politics” by The Stranger in 2013 and was named one of “Seattle’s Smartest Global Women” by The Seattle Globalist in 2014. In 2014 she received a “Rising Star” award from the Northwest Asian Weekly and received national recognition in 2015 for her program, the Refugee Women’s Institute. In 2020 Sahar was named a MOSAIC Cohort Fellow for the Progressive Policy Institute. She has served as adjunct faculty at both Seattle University and the University of Washington School of Law.

Sahar is a past president and co-founder of the Middle Eastern Legal Association of Washington, as well as the founder of its Legal Clinic – the first Middle Eastern Legal Clinic in the country. She is a current board member for Working Washington and a past board member for OneAmerica Votes, the ACLU, the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project, and the UNA – USA. Sahar is fluent in Farsi and French and her academic work has been published in the Seattle Journal for Social Justice, the Seattle Journal of Environmental Law, the Gonzaga Law Review and The Routledge Handbook of Translation and Activism.

Beyond this, Sahar is also a regularly published poet and has had her work featured in a number of poetry anthologies and journals. She is the mother of two children and her favorite Persian dish is Fesenjan.