Aarya Nijat is a Founding Partner and Chief Operating Officer of Beikraan Inc. In her role as Acting-Policy Director with the Government of Afghanistan, she extensively contributed to the development of the country’s first ever sub-national governance policy, now orienting local governance legal reform and governing the working of all provinces, districts and municipalities across Afghanistan. Most recently, she served as Director Capacity and Institutional Development at the Independent Directorate for Local Governance (IDLG), where she pioneered Afghanistan’s first-ever Anti-Sexual Harassment Policy, applicable to over more than 14,000 civil servants. Trained in adaptive leadership framework, Nijat has served on the Harvard Kennedy School teaching team twice. A Fulbright Scholar and a Mary Boies Fellow, she holds a Master's degree in Public Administration from the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, a Master's in International Relations, and dual undergraduate degrees in Political Science and Law from Quaid-i-Azam and Punjab universities. She specializes in policy development, strategic planning, governance, political analysis, gender and leadership capacity development.