Jacqueline Saper

Jacqueline Saper delivers more than a lecture: She brings audiences inside history. Through firsthand experience and sharp contemporary insight, she illustrates the roots of today’s unrest in Iran while revealing how authoritarian systems reshape everyday life. Her presentations weave memoir, political analysis, women’s studies, and Middle Eastern history, making her uniquely suited for universities, civic organizations, interfaith communities, and international forums. Audiences leave with a deeper understanding of Iran, women’s resistance, and the fragile nature of freedom.

Saper is an award-winning author, TEDx speaker, commentator, and internationally recognized voice on Iran and women’s rights under authoritarian rule. Born and raised in Tehran, she came of age during the Iranian Revolution and witnessed firsthand how ideology can transform an open society into a repressive regime. Her lived experience, combined with decades of research and writing, gives her work rare moral clarity and emotional force.

She is the author of "From Miniskirt to Hijab: A Girl in Revolutionary Iran," winner of the Chicago Writers Association Book of the Year Award and finalist for multiple international literary honors. Her work has been featured in The Times of Israel, TEDx, The Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles, The Jewish Chronicle of London, The Seattle Times, The Forward, The American Academy of Religion, and The Sun Sentinel.