Building more inclusive, resilient and connected infrastructures
- with community at their core.
Parry Aftab is a globally recognized strategist, lawyer and cross-sector leader known for turning complex challenges into practical, collaborative solutions.
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For more than three decades, she has worked across governments, industry, international organizations and communities, bringing together the people, expertise and resources needed to create lasting change.
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Today, she is applying that experience to food security, resilience and strengthening the local food ecosystem with community not as an audience, but at its core.
Creating Impact
Strategy creates impact only when stakeholders can
understand it, adopt it, support it and build on it.
Parry Aftab
An international lawyer recognized as one of the founders of cyberlaw, a strategic advisor, author, entrepreneur and community-builder, Parry has spent decades seeing around corners, bringing diverse stakeholders together to address emerging challenges and preparing for whatever comes next. Her latest focus is addressing local food sector resiliency.
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She has advised countries, the United Nations, governmental agencies, international organizations, technology leaders, law-enforcement agencies, military organizations and institutions around the world, helping shape policy, standards and practical responses to complex and rapidly evolving challenges.
“Parry Aftab is part Wonder Woman, part Super Mom and part Oprah Winfrey!”
- Jules Polonetsky, CEO, Future of Privacy Forum
Parry's Approach
View the system as a whole. Find what is missing. Bring the right people together. Build what is needed and create the bridges that connect them. That's Parry's approach to addressing complex, multistakeholder systems.
Understand the entire system
Step back and view it all, ask questions and identify the goals, gaps, barriers and people affected.
Connect what is disconnected
Bring together stakeholders, expertise, resources and perspectives that too often operate separately.
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Build for the real world
Create practical solutions people understand, can adopt and that actually work.
Ask the Right Questions:
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Is it grounded in reality?
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Have the right people been heard?
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Does it make sense to the people it affects?
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Will they understand it?
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Will they adopt it?
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Does it actually work?
Listen first.
Lived reality has a way of dispelling assumptions.
See It in Action
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Parry’s approach is not theoretical. It is applied through distinct platforms, each designed to bring together the people, expertise and resources needed to create practical change.
PEI Food Strong
This is where the professionals reside.
Building a more connected, resilient local food ecosystem by bringing together producers, businesses, organizations, expertise and resources that too often operate separately.
PEI Cooks and PEI Good Eats
This is where the community resides.
Using food, stories and shared experience to strengthen community connections, support local businesses and give Island voices a larger platform.
Digital Trust
This is where it all began.
Creating practical, collaborative systems to address emerging digital challenges in an uncharted landscape by bringing governments, industry, experts, young people and communities into the same conversation.
Strengthening Existing Systems
This is where experience becomes practical change.
Identifying what already works, what is missing and where stronger connections can make an existing system more effective, inclusive and resilient.
When Listening Changed Everything
"Some of the most important breakthroughs in my work resulted from
someone challenging one of the assumptions I did not realize I was making."
Over decades, Parry has developed, tested and refined many assumptions. Then, every once in a while, someone who has lived the issue offers a perspective she had not considered—and changes everything.
The best experts listen, learn and apply what they hear. Even when it means starting again.
The World Would Be
Better Off Without You!
The story of a troubled teen's fight to hide her vulnerability when her right to justice may rely on her exposing it. When should those cyberbullying others be held responsible for any resulting suicide?
It changed Parry's position on criminal consequences of cyberbullying leading to self-harm or suicide.
Online is Our Real World
When a neuro-divergent teen was told to turn off the Internet when she experienced cyberbullying, she shared how much being denied access hurt young people with special needs.​ And she produced a video to explain it.
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Parry began opposing governmental bans for minors using social media as a result.
Experience and Expertise
Digital Trust, Safety and Policy
More than three decades of work across cyberlaw, privacy, online safety, digital risk and emerging technology policy.
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Selected work: Interpol, the FBI, DOJ and RCMP, Homeland Security, Scotland Yard, the FTC, the National Sheriffs’ Association, Girl Scouts of the USA, Microsoft, Facebook, CISCO, Oracle, Google, the British High Commission and the United Nations.
Coalition Building
Bringing together governments, industry, NGOs, experts and communities—ensuring inclusion with special needs, vulnerable populations, international perspectives and differing values are represented and heard.
Selected work: Billion Strong, People-Centered Internet, the Anti-Defamation League, the Urban League, LGBTQ+ organizations, First Nations, Girl Scouts of the USA, Love Is Not Abuse, the American Academy of Pediatrics, Hong Kong International School, The Art of Living and the United Nations
Strategy, Standards and Systems
Designing practical frameworks, standards and systems that help stakeholders respond to complex challenges clearly, collaboratively and effectively.
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Selected work: the U.S. government’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), Harvard, the United Nations, IEEE, the Internet Society, Disney, Nickelodeon, MTV, Sesame Street, the MPAA and the Vatican.
Local Food Resiliency and Community Infrastructure
Applying systems thinking, collaboration and community knowledge to strengthen local food networks, support producers and build more resilient infrastructure.
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Selected work: PEI Food Strong, PEI Cooks at Home community cookbook, PEI Good Eats, the Greater Summerside Chamber of Commerce, and work with local farmers, fishers, food producers, retailers, home cooks, youth organizations, households, Gifts from the Heart, Acadian community cooks, newcomers, tourism groups and community halls across PEI.
Trusted on the World Stage
Parry Aftab is the leading
cybercrime expert in the US.
- Boston Herald
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Global Media Reach
Featured in thousands of media stories worldwide and a frequent guest on Today, Good Morning America, CNN, BBC, CBC, CTV, MSNBC, Dr. Phil, leading radio programs and news broadcasts on ABC, CBS, Fox and NBC.
Government & Global Forums
Testified before the U.S. House of Representatives, the Senate and Canadian Parliament. Appeared before the UN. Hosted events at the U.S. Senate, the House of Lords, UK Parliament and the UN.
Creating Youth Experts
Created and ran programs that trained students from 4th - 12th grade to become youth researchers, expert advisers and public educators advising Procter & Gamble, Nickelodeon, MTV, the Girl Scouts of the USA, the FBI and XBox.
Global Experience,
Local Application
By applying decades of strategic systems design and community engagement experience locally through PEI Food Strong initiatives, PEI Cooks programs and the PEI Good Eats community, we are developing a PEI model that can work across Canada.
Guidance & Recognition
Recognized by the FBI, White House, U.S. Congress and RCMP, with appointments to national Internet-safety task forces by Congress and the U.S. State Attorneys General.
Author of several books, an award-winning columnist, and a contributor to Council of Europe and UNESCO publications.
Programs at Scale
Designed the Girl Scouts of the USA’s cybersafety program for 2 million girls, led programs reaching hundreds of thousands of students, created national initiatives with Disney, Cisco, Microsoft, Facebook, MTV and the United Nations, and designed university doctoral programs and curricula for K-12 schools.
Let's Build What Comes Next, Together
Complex challenges need more than ideas. They need the right people, practical insight and a shared commitment to building something that works.
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Want to learn more and get involved?
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