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Who We Are

Creshendo helps migrants move from being managed by systems to helping shape them. We co-create integration workshops, leadership programs, and storytelling initiatives with migrants, refugees, diaspora members, and grassroots partners. Our work focuses on helping displaced communities build connection, confidence, visibility, and pathways to long-term belonging.

We are not a traditional top-down nonprofit. We do not assume communities need saving. We believe the people closest to displacement should help shape the tools, stories, and systems that affect their futures.

Powered by a global volunteer team across 12+ countries, Creshendo is building a practical, community-led approach to migration work designed to grow without losing its center.

Mission

Creshendo equips migrants to lead their own integration by launching businesses, reclaiming their stories, & influencing the systems that shape their lives. Through entrepreneurship, storytelling, & advocacy, we create pathways to income, leadership, and belonging.

Learn more

Our Values

Agency Over Charity

We believe people should have the tools, relationships, and opportunities to shape their own futures.

Community-Led by Design

The people closest to displacement help shape the work. We build with communities, not for them.

Truth in Storytelling

Stories and insights should be grounded in lived experience, not assumptions.

Economic Dignity

Belonging requires pathways to opportunity. We support approaches that strengthen economic mobility, leadership, and long-term stability.

Shared Leadership

Lasting change happens when power, knowledge, and decision-making are shared.

Radical Inclusion

We welcome people across backgrounds, identities, and migration experiences. Strong communities are built through participation, not exclusion.

Built to Last

We focus on practical approaches that communities can adapt, strengthen, and carry forward.

Creshendo Impact Report

2024 - 2025 Impact

This report covers a year of programs, partnerships, and people. It's not a celebration of what Creshendo did for communities. It's evidence of what communities built, with Creshendo alongside them.

 

The work is still early. The need is real. And the people leading the way are already here. This report shows what's possible when organizations get out of the way and follow their lead.

READ FULL REPORT

Global Impact Team

Parisa Pirooz

Founder & Executive Director

Parisa Pirooz founded Creshendo on a belief that shapes everything the organization does: the people closest to a challenge are best equipped to design the response to it.
 
A lawyer by training and nonprofit leader by practice, she has spent years working alongside families navigating displacement and rebuilding their lives in systems not designed with them in mind. That proximity is the work.
 
Parisa has worked with displaced communities in the United States, Türkiye, and Jordan, including on the federal response to the Afghanistan evacuation, where she helped launch programming across multiple U.S. safe havens. She later spent four years consulting within one of the nation’s largest refugee resettlement networks before founding Creshendo to test a different model, one where community members are co-designers, facilitators, and leaders rather than recipients of services.
 
Under her leadership, Creshendo has grown to more than 50 volunteers across 20+ countries, organized into seven multidisciplinary teams. The organization’s ambition is to develop practical methods, leadership pathways, and evidence that other organizations can adopt to strengthen migrant-led approaches across the sector.
 
Parisa believes that systems designed without the people they serve will always fall short, no matter how well-resourced they are.

Leadership

Paula Sanz

Director | Integration

Natalie Hench

Director | Operations

Klara Tomazic

Director | Human Resources

Susan Ferugio

Director | Marketing & Comms

Board of Directors

Navneet Bhullar, MD, MSc

Board Advisor

Hossein Hamed, PhD

Board Member

Abubaka Said

Board Member

Nicholas Sones

Board Volunteer

Join Us

Creshendo is powered by a global team of volunteers across five continents. They are PhD students, educators, legal advocates, and storytellers who bring lived experience and deep expertise to build a more just future for displaced people. This is not a temporary team. This is a movement.

 

If you’re interested in joining this global movement and using your skills to make a difference, apply to our volunteer roles today.

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Creshendo is a nonprofit organization that helps immigrants and refugees integrate, lead, and belong. We provide practical support, amplify stories, and advocate for the communities that make us all stronger.

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Privacy   U.S. Registration Number (EIN): 88 – 0820977    EU Registration Number: 80659492

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U.S. Registration Number (EIN): 88 – 0820977   

EU Registration Number: 80659492

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