Cat Parenti was born in Brooklyn New York and majored in Russian Studies in Fordham University. After graduation, she worked as a part time translator for a Russian lawyer in the United Nations, taught English as a second language to business men in New York City’s Berlitz School of Languages and was a private secretary to a Japanese vice president of Panasonic.
Parenti lived on and off in Afghanistan and Pakistan for over twenty years and is an author, teacher, humanitarian and international speaker on Afghan culture. She is multi-lingual: Dari, Urdu, Pashto, some Italian, Russian and French and her speaking engagements include: the Afghan Royal Women’s Society and the Pakistani Writers’ Club, the United Nations Muslim Women’s Association, libraries, schools, Kiwanis and Rotary Clubs.
In Afghanistan, she started collecting antique costumes and tribal jewelry that she sold to museum and museum shops on the East coast of the United States.
After the Soviet invasion, Parenti joined the Afghanistan Foundation and became the Director of the Afghan Women’s Work Project. With the help of the Girl Scouts of America, she collected sewing kits for the Afghan women in the camps of Pakistan helping them to restart their handicrafts relieving their boredom and depression. She ran fundraisers in the U.S., sold their crafts returning 90% of money to them. Parenti had American grade school children collect packets of vegetable seeds that were flown to Pakistan by American cargo planes and taken over the Hindu Kush Mountains into the liberated areas of Afghanistan where she personally distributed them. She also collaborated with the Intergovernmental Committee for Migration bringing Afghan resistance fighters to the U.S. for reconstructive surgery, supplying room, board and post-operative care. For this she received an award.
Parenti has written articles for the Arizona Republic, the Christian Science Monitor as well as several other newspapers and was interviewed on numerous occasions.
