In 2011 the Near Eastern Languages and Civilization (NELC) program at UW initiated an advisory board program under the leadership of Dr. Joel Walker, Director, to coalesce the Iranian American community to support the Persian and Iranian Studies Program at UW. With the encouragement of UW, we formed an ad-hoc committee which eventually grew into Peyvand. This committee functioned both as a UW advisory board as well as present day Peyvand. For several years Peyvand hosted a sold out Nowruz event at UW. This group organized a successful fundraiser at Mercer Island Community Center on behalf of Persian and Iranian Studies that netted over $130,000. Eventually, some of the advisory board members formed a nonprofit entity by the name of Peyvand.