FEZANA is pleased to announce new Co-Chairs for its Interfaith Activities Committee, Bakhtavar Desai and Behnaz Mistry, and looks forward to working with them on future projects. Thank you, also, to the outgoing Co-Chairs, Ardeshir Irani and Maneck Bhujwala for their dedicated service on the committee.
Behnaz Mistry came to the USA to do her Master’s. She graduated with an MBA in finance from the University of Scranton, PA. She is married to Sohrab Mistry and has two teenage daughters Sanaya and Zara. She also has two dogs and a fish at home. She is the treasurer of ZAMWI and works in Financial Services. She volunteers with organizations like Bethesda Cares for the Homeless and has been one of the Zoroastrian representatives on the MLK day planning committee for the Interfaith Council in DC. When not volunteering or working with her clients, who she helps with insurance and retirement planning and employee benefits, she likes to spend time with her family.
Bakhtavar Desai, a licensed CPA who presently freelances as an auditor and consultant mainly serving the public sector and not-for-profits, lives in Fairfield, Ohio with her husband, Fred. She began studying Zoroastrianism seriously when her three children began to ask questions about the religion. She wanted to provide them with the best and most correct answers and also provide them with resource material with which they could investigate for themselves. Later, she felt that she should share what she had learned with all the children of her local Zoroastrian community.
In 1997, she began getting involved with the Zoroastrian community in the tri-state region of Kentucky, Ohio, & Indiana (ZAKOI) and began to lead them in formerly organizing the group as an official not-for-profit organization. Since those days she has been actively involved in keeping the local Zoroastrian community together through various activities including interfaith celebrations, teaching religion classes, and hosting religion camps, community jasans and muktad prayers in her home. For the last ten years Bakhtavar and her husband have been leading the ZAKOI community in fundraising and working towards someday having its own Worship Center.
Recently, Cincinnati has experienced a spring of interfaith efforts at the local level where various Faith groups have been working hard to come together. Bakhtavar and Fred have been deeply involved in these activities. In the process, they have increased awareness and understanding of Zoroastrianism in the Cincinnati area. They are currently on the steering committee of the 2019 Cincinnati’s Annual Festival of Faiths. Also they were part of the founding committee for the Sacred Connections program which keeps the various faith groups in Cincinnati connected and involved in working together towards social causes throughout the year.
