Zerbanoo Gifford

Zerbanoo Gifford was born in 1950 in India to Bailey Irani, the founder President of the World Zoroastrian Organization, and Kitty Mazda, who had studied child development with Madame Montessori. At the age of 3, Gifford was brought to Britain and her parents ran a hotel in London. She was educated at Roedean School in Sussex, and later at Watford College of Technology, the London School of Journalism and the Open University.

In 1982 Gifford was elected as a Liberal councillor in Harrow, in north-west London. She was the first woman of colour to be elected councillor for the Liberal Party. In 1983 she became the first South Asian woman to contest a general election in the United Kingdom, although she was unsuccessful in the three elections for which she stood. She was elected to the Liberal Party’s Federal Executive in 1984, the first person of colour to be elected onto the governing body of any British political party.

With a keen interest in politics, Gifford wrote a biography of Dadabhai Naoroji in 1992 to celebrate the centenary of his election. She chaired the commission Looking into Ethnic Minority Involvement in British Life and in 1997 joined the Race Equality Advisory Panel at the Home Office.

Zerbanoo Gifford trained as a journalist and has been a magazine editor and written numerous books. Her first book, The Golden Thread, published in 1990, focused on the contribution of South Asian women to British society, including figures such as Meera Syal and Madhur Jaffrey.

As a teenager, Gifford volunteered for the homelessness charity Shelter and went on to become Shelter’s London organizer. She founded the ASHA Centre, an educational centre in the Forest of Dean. She was also director of Anti-Slavery International. She has been awarded numerous prizes and honours for her humanitarian work.