Anthony Agnello currently serves as President of the Friends of Afghanistan,  (FoA) the national organization of Returned Peace Corps Volunteers from this strategically important nation. FoA, in alliance with community goups and student service organizations, have sent books, school supplies and computers to Afghanistan. They also have helped to fund the construction of six schools for Afghan girls in addition to numerous other educational outreach projects. FoA, supports SOLA, the School of Leadership-Afghanistan, in Kabul and a gender equity weaving project in Bamiyan along with RPCV Louise Pascale’s Afghan Children’s Songbook Project. The group provides disaster relief in the region, through author Khaled Hosseini’s Foundation.

Mr. Agnello, who received the 2013 Clifford Harkins Alumni Award at Northern Arizona University for distinguished humanitarian service, is a co-founder of the Peace Corps Alliance for Intercultural Understanding, an organization that is dedicated to providing resources and guidance to RPCVs that will enable them to engage in instructive dialogue designed to identify and address racism, bigotry, anti-Semitism and Islamophobia.

(tony@afghanconnections.org)

• Chairman of the Board at Indiana Center for Middle East Peace, Inc.

• Board of directors at SOLA—School of Leadership, Afghanistan

• Chief operating officer at Friends of Afghanistan

• Peace Corps Volunteer, Afghanistan 1972-75

Non-Profit 501c3 Tax Exempt, Corporation Treasurer, Board Director and Developer of Distance Education. Technology Expert in Higher Education:

40 years experience, teaching, selling, managing people and technology;
implementing technologies in many different industries, including higher 
education, insurance, manufacturing, and consulting. Retired 2015
 

The tragic events of 9/11 set Baktash on a path of examining why people do what they do. Upon graduation from college, he decided to serve in the Peace Corps as an educator in a rural village in Mozambique. His father learned English from a Peace Corps Volunteer in Kandahar in the 1960s and that experience was the inspiration for his family to come to the United States.

After completing his service in the Peace Corps, Baktash went back to Afghanistan, the country of his birth, to serve as a combat interpreter and cultural advisor for three years supporting military and reconstruction efforts throughout the country. This life-changing experience put his Afghan-American identity on the front line on the War on Terror in Afghanistan.

After his service in Afghanistan, Baktash produced and translated a number of award-winning documentary films about free speech, photojournalism, the refugee crisis, and violence against women. He writes, speaks, and teaches regularly about individual, organizational, and societal change.