At first, it was only an idea and a vision. The idea was seeded into Dr Sadeq Bigdeli’s mind, at a time when he, a Harvard educated lawyer and a professor, had take on an adventure of accepting a position as Iran’s trade Chief Negotiator in 2015. To the surprise of his family and friends, he had decided to leave his academic position in New Zealand to help his home country integrate into the world economy after decades of sanctions and economic isolation. Disillusioned with the level of ignorance in policy and business circles not only in the developing world but equally in the developed world about how to become forces of positive change and influence rather then forces of destruction and perpetual war, he decided to embark on a new adventure – to help start a revolutionary path of transformative education. The idea started to become reality when a group of former students and colleagues who shared his vision started an exciting journey nobody knew where it would lead them to. The Persian Academy of Intl Trade, the first of its kind in the region, aims to reach the Persian speaking world in Iran, Afghanistan and Tajikistan. It is a joint project of BigdeliAcademy.com consisting of top Iranian professors. BigdeliAcademy is not however meant to limit itself geographically as it also aims at educating businesses, policy makers and future leaders in the North about specific issues of significant relevance in the South ranging from cross-cultural negotiations to trade and governance structures.
Our Story
Origin of Our Domain Name
Bigdeli Academy is named after Dr Mohammad Reza Ziaee Bigdeli, Professor Emeritus and founding Dean of Allameh Tabatabaei University School of Law. He is considered as the father of international law teaching and scholarship in post-1979 Iran, whose leading textbook in the field is well known to generations of law students not only in Iran but also Afghanistan and other parts of the Persian speaking world.
A Passion for Educational Entrepreneurship
We are a team of very diverse backgrounds – law, economics, IT, arts, business & marketing – connected from various geographies; but we equally share a passion for “educational entrepreneurship”. A kind of education that goes far beyond the existing broken systems of traditional academic institutions to train agents of change – one that capitalizes on the fast evolving technologies to truly empower the new generation of students, leaders, businessmen and entrepreneurs regardless of their backgrounds and professions; ones who can not only keep up with the fast changing world environment but the ones who can be forces of influence and positive change.
