Deputy Director, Joint Head of the Windrush Compensation Scheme

Policy Fellow, Centre for Science and Policy

Zahra is a deputy director in the Home Office. Her civil service career has covered multiple roles in the Cabinet Office as well as some time in Downing Street in the Prime Minister’s Policy Unit where she worked to secure a £90m statutory commitment for local authorities to provide accommodation based services to victims of domestic abuse. Other roles have included working on serious violence in the Prime Minister’s Delivery Unit and in the award-winning Open Innovation Team. Prior to joining the civil service Zahra worked in the third sector on community cohesion, interfaith understanding and creating opportunities for underrepresented young people to engage in politics through establishing the Patchwork Foundation. She holds a Masters in Public Policy from the Blavatnik School of Government at the University of Oxford where she was a Blavatnik Scholar and was a TEDxOxbridge speaker on the power and importance of listening. Outside of work she is a trustee of the Fawcett Society, the UK’s leading membership charity campaigning for women’s rights and gender equality.