Speaker Bio
Former child genocide survivor Taban Shoresh OBE is Founder & CEO of the Lotus Flower, a charity supporting women and girl conflict survivors in Kurdistan, northern Iraq and the UK. Since March 2016, the charity has supported more than 84,000 vulnerable community members at its centres, through livelihoods and skills training, educational classes, mental health therapy and awareness around women's rights and gender-based violence.
With a political activist father during Saddam Hussein’s regime in 1980s Iraq, Taban was imprisoned aged just four, and she and her family escaped being buried alive before Amnesty International flew them to safety in the UK as refugees. In 2014, Taban was horrified to see the ISIS attacks in her homeland, and gave up her successful career to return as an aid worker before establishing the Lotus Flower.
Taban has featured extensively in TV, radio, digital and print media – including the Guardian, Telegraph, Independent, Daily Mail, Grazia, HuffPost, Elle, Sky News, BBC News, LBC, Al Jazeera and CNN. She is also a One Young World ambassador, and a key figure in refugee-led initiatives on the international stage.
In January 2024, Taban was awarded an OBE for “outstanding” services to refugees and displaced people in Iraq, and she was also named a GQ magazine Hero 2024. She recently recorded her first TEDx talks in Paris and Kurdistan.