Biography
Afshan Paarlberg, JD, is currently a part-time Assistant Research Scholar with the IU Lilly Family School of Philanthropy research team. After a lengthy career as a practicing attorney, she first joined the school in 2021 as a visiting assistant professor. The next year she joined the research team as an assistant research scholar and served as the director of the Global Philanthropy Indices from 2023-2025.
Afshan has over fifteen years of public interest and private firm experience in immigration and nonprofit legal matters. She was selected as the 2023-2024 Global Philanthropy Fellow, a competitive fellowship selected from philanthropic scholars from all over the world. She then received a 2024-2025 Fulbright research award, hosted by the UBC Centre Migration Studies, and moved with her family to Vancouver, BC.
Afshan’s life work has focused on community-engaged and policy-driven work on philanthropy, nonprofits, and access to justice. In addition to publishing across a wide range of philanthropy and nonprofit journals, she has conducted workshops and presentations on philanthropy and socio-legal issues across the United States and around the world. She oversaw all aspects of the project and served as lead author for the global report in the 2025 Global Philanthropy Environment Index, which included 111 reports from 95 countries and economies and 15 regions.
Amongst her many community activities, Afshan has served on the Indianapolis boards of The Appellate Project, the Eiteljorg Museum of American Indians and Western Arts, Exodus Refugee Immigration, and the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding.
Afshan received her bachelor’s degree from the University of Texas at Austin, her JD from the University of Houston. A PhD Candidate at the IU Lilly Family School of Philanthropy, her dissertation is entitled “Bridging Access Across Immigration Legal Deserts: Understanding Variations in Nonprofit Responses.”