From refugee to Young New Zealander of the Year

Rez Gardi was born in a United Nations refugee camp in Pakistan as her Kurdish family escaped persecution from the Baath regime in Iraq and the Turkish government in the 1980s. Her father is from Northern Kurdistan and her mother is from southern Kurdistan. At the age of six in 1998, Rez and her family settled in New Zealand. Rez has sought to use her difficult start in life as a motivation to succeed, recently becoming New Zealands first Kurdish female lawyer. Rez is also the 2017 Young New Zealander of the Year. Rez works in corporate litigation at New Zealand, and previously worked at the United Nations Office in Nairobi as a human rights intern. She is passionate about supporting young refugees through a mentoring and support programme she has founded to try and address the under-representation of refugee students in tertiary education, as she believes education is pivotal to changing the future for refugees.

Source: supplied by Rez Gardi