Rez Gardi is an international lawyer and human rights advocate . Being born as a refugee in Pakistan, Rez sought to use her difficult start in life as motivation to help others. She became New Zealand’s first female Kurdish lawyer andthe first Kurd to graduate from Harvard Law School, where she graduated as a Fulbright Scholar with a Master of Laws.

Her previous roles include working for the New Zealand Human Rights Commission, as lecturer on international law and human rights, and a Harvard Human Rights Fellow in Iraq working to build cases for the prosecution of ISIS regarding their targeted genocidal campaign against the Yezidis.Rez is the founder of ‘Empower’ – a refugee-led organization which aims to address the underrepresentation of refugee youth in higher education. She is also the Co-Founder the Centre for Asia Pacific Refugee Studies at the University of Auckland, New Zealand.

Rez represented New Zealand at the first ever Global Refugee Youth Consultations in 2016, helped establish the Global Youth Advisory Council to the UNHCR, and is a co-founding member of the Refugee Advisory Group to the UNHCR Annual Tripartite Consultations on Resettlement (ATCR).s. She currently serves on UNHCR’s Advisory Board and as an expert on the Refugee and Forced Displacement Initiative at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.

Rez has received an array of awards including: 2017 Young New Zealander of the Year, 2018 Women of Influence Finalist, 2019 Outstanding Youth Delegate Award at the UN Youth Assembly, 2019 Eisenhower Youth Fellow, 2020 Global Impact Award, and 2021 Peace Ambassador for the One Young World Summit, and was recognized as a Gates Foundation Global Goalkeeper in 2022.