Outstanding Academic Award
Afshan Paarlberg
Assistant Research Scholar, Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy
For distinguished academic achievement in the nonprofit sector.
Afshan Paarlberg is an internationally recognized lawyer and scholar with nearly two decades of leadership, general counsel, and research experience in philanthropy, nonprofits, law, and justice. She remains active in access-to-justice initiatives, working to improve understanding, policy, and practice in nonprofit governance, emergence, and social impact across complex regulatory environments.
Building on her longstanding commitment to the field, Afshan recently served as Director, Global Philanthropy Indices, overseeing an international research portfolio and supporting evidence-informed solutions for enabling philanthropic and nonprofit activities across 95 countries. Her research note, _Developing an International_ _Philanthropy Dataset_, offers a blueprint for community-engaged global policy design. She has led workshops and presentations on philanthropy and socio-legal issues worldwide, supported in part by international fellowships. In 2024-2025, Afshan was a visiting scholar at the University of British Columbia Center for Migration Studies, supported by Fulbright Canada. In 2023-2024, she was a Global Philanthropy Fellow, supported by the Giving USA Foundation. She has co-authored proposals totaling over $3.5M in research and program funding and published in leading peer-reviewed journals such as VOLUNTAS, NVSQ, and Nonprofit Policy Forum.
Afshan has served on the boards of the Eiteljorg Museum of American Indians and Western Art, Exodus Refugee Immigration, and the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding. She also currently serves on the board of The Appellate Project, a U.S. nonprofit that supports emerging leaders in the appellate field, reflecting her ongoing commitment to mentorship and excellence among the next generation of lawyers.
Afshan earned bachelor’s degrees from the University of Texas at Austin and a JD from the University of Houston Law Center. In April 2026, she defended her PhD dissertation titled _Bridging Access Across Immigration Legal Deserts: Understanding Variations in Nonprofit Responses_. This work deepens our understanding of immigrant-oriented nonprofits as capacity-generating legal aid entities and advances solutions to legal deserts.