From Refugee to Tech Innovator: The Journey of Sara Wahedi
Forced to flee Afghanistan at the tender age of four, Sara Wahedi has since turned to technology to promote accountability and safety across regimes.
One of Sara Wahedi’s most vivid childhood memories is of being a four-year-old in a refugee shelter in Buffalo, New York. Her mother, a former English teacher forced to leave her job by the Taliban, had managed to escape Afghanistan with her two children, aiming to start anew in North America. While her mother worked as a cleaner in the shelter, young Sara was given the task of checking a bulletin board each morning for the names of refugees who were due for an asylum interview in Canada. This early sense of responsibility marked the beginning of Wahedi’s life in North America.
Wahedi doesn’t recall much from her early days in Kabul. She considers her life to have truly begun in Canada, where she grew up in poverty while her mother worked multiple jobs. This humble upbringing, coupled with her reliance on shelter homes and food banks, shaped her perspective from an early age.
As she pursued her political science degree at the University of British Columbia, Wahedi began working with refugee support organizations in Canada during her summer breaks. This work led her to defer her studies and question her own identity. By 2017, she had taken up a six-month internship with a research firm in Afghanistan, which aimed to develop a support ‘toolkit’ for refugees, despite her mother’s concerns for her safety.
Following her internship, Wahedi chose to remain in Kabul, working as a policy aide for the Afghan government. Despite the daily occurrence of terror attacks, she found joy in being part of the young enterprising crowd, contributing to the development of Afghanistan through their start-ups, flower shops, and schools.
One fateful day in May 2018, a suicide bombing occurred on the street where she was walking home from work. With the heat of the blast burning her skin, she quickly realized the gravity of the situation. The realization that a friend, an employee at the U.S embassy in Kabul, knew about the attack via security text alerts before she did, despite the attack happening in front of her, sparked an idea. Determined to make this safety feature accessible to every Afghan, Wahedi collaborated with a leading Afghan tech company to create Ehtesab, a free mobile app delivering safety alerts during emergencies. The app ceased operations in 2024 due to safety concerns for its employees following the Taliban’s seizure of power.
The collapse of Afghanistan was a significant shock to Wahedi, who had been optimistic about the Afghan government’s ability to counter the Taliban. At the time, she was in New York preparing to begin a bachelor’s degree at Columbia University. Now studying at the University of Oxford, she remains enthusiastic about the potential of technology as a ‘tool for good’. Through her startup Civaam, she facilitates covert pathways to healthcare, education, and psychosocial support in crisis regions.
Though she dreams of a day when she can return to a free and safe Afghanistan, for now, she draws inspiration from the Afghan women who defy oppressive laws daily and her best friend, a prominent education activist managing 14 undercover schools in Afghanistan.
