Manizha Naderi (ex officio), WAW executive director, was born in Kabul, Afghanistan and raised in New York and New Jersey. She has a BA in English Language Arts from Hunter College. While she has roots in the Afghan community in Queens, NY, she and her family now divide their time between NYC and Kabul.

Belquis Ahmadi has been an advocate for Afghan women’s rights since the early 1990s, when she helped found the Afghan Women’s Network in Kabul. She has served in many different capacities over the years, and has authored numerous articles and reports on human rights in Afghanistan. Until recently, She was a senior human rights advisor with USAID-Afghanistan Rule of Law Project. She currently heads ARoLP’s Women’s Rights under Islam Program, the aim of which is to enable Afghan women and men to understand and think critically about the customs, traditions and practices that are discriminatory toward women but are justified by using narrow and repressive interpretations of Islamic rules and norms. Belquis was political and legal advisor for Democracy International during the 2009 Presidential and Parliamentary elections in Afghanistan.

Esther Hyneman spent her professional life teaching English and American literature, Women's Studies, Gender Studies, and multicultural literatures at the Brooklyn Campus of Long Island University. For over 25 years, she was an officer in the LIU faculty union (LIUFF), one of the strongest unions in higher education in America. In that capacity, she fought for faculty rights and was a leader of several successful faculty strikes. She retired from the classroom in 2001 to devote herself to humanitarian work and human rights advocacy for women and girls.  She is the principal grant writer for the organization.

Sherry (Shirin) Shokouhi is a licensed mental health counselor as well as a credentialed alcoholism and substance abuse counselor, with a Masters degree in clinical psychology. Her counseling experience includes helping a wide range of clients, including children, adolescents, adults, couples, and families in a variety of challenging situations. She has worked as a clinician at non-profit organizations and public schools, providing mental health services to disadvantaged Asian immigrant populations in NYC, with a particular focus on Afghan women and children. She is fluent in English and Farsi/Dari.

Masuda Sultan has been working on the economic and political empowerment of Afghan women through a variety of roles over the last four years. She serves on the advisory board of the Business Council for Peace, an organization that helps women build sustainable businesses in post-conflict countries. She is a member of the Women Waging Peace network and co-authored the report on Afghanistan, "From Rhetoric to Reality: Afghan Women on the Agenda for Peace." Ms. Sultan produced and narrated "From Ground Zero to Ground Zero," the first documentary on Afghan civilian casualties to air on US television, later shown in Europe and Japan. She is a contributing author to Women for Afghan Women: Shattering Myths and Claiming the Future and author of My War At Home. She recently completed her Master's in Public Administration at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. Masuda lives in Afghanistan and is working as an advisor to the Ministry of Finance.

Sunita Viswanath is co-founder and board member of Women for Afghan Women and editor of Women for Afghan Women: Shattering Myths and Claiming the Future, Palgrave/St. Martins Press (October 2002). Sunita worked for many years as director of grants and programs at The Sister Fund, where WAW was founded and incubated. From 2006 to 2009, Sunita was executive director of Funders Concerned About AIDS. Sunita now volunteers full-time for WAW.  She lives in Brooklyn, NY, with her husband Stephan Shaw and their three sons: Gautama, Akash, and Satya. Sunita was a 2011 recipient of the Feminist Majority Foundation's Global Women's Rights Award for her work with WAW.