Parsi or Parsee ( /ˈpɑrsiː/) refers to a member of the larger of the two Zoroastrian communities in South Asia, the other being the Irani community.

According to tradition, the present-day Parsis descend from a group of Zoroastrians of Iran who immigrated to India during the 10th century AD, to avoid persecution by Muslim invaders who were in the process of conquering Iran. At the time of the Arab invasion of Iran, the dominant religion of the region was Zoroastrianism. The Iranians rebelled against the Arab invaders for almost 200 years; in Iran this period is now known as the "Two "Centuries of Silence" or "Period of Silence". After many failed attempts to free the country from Arab domination, the Iranians were forced to either pay heavy taxes (Jizya) or to convert to Islam, the latter being the ultimate goal of the new rulers and thus the easier way. During this time many Iranians who are now called Parsi rejected both options and instead chose to take refuge by fleeing from Iran to India.

Nina Godiwalla is a bestselling author who has written for The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, and Houston Chronicle.

She writes about business issues for Wharton Magazine. Before founding MindWorks, which provides stress management and meditation training to corporations and other professional organizations, she spent almost a decade working for Fortune 500 corporations including Morgan Stanley and Johnson & Johnson. She used her experience as the basis of her book, Suits: A Woman on Wall Street. In an interview with Bloomberg, she said that Liar's Poker did not adequately describe her experience as a woman and a minority.

One example of the stories that she recounts in an article for the Wall Street Journal:

She speaks nationally on diversity and stress management in the workplace and has been featured in several major publications including USA Today, The New York Times, ABC News, and Bloomberg BusinessWeek. Godiwalla has a Master of Business Administration from Wharton School of Business, a Master of Arts focused in creative writing from Dartmouth College, and a Bachelor of Business Administration from University of Texas. She currently lives in Austin, Texas.

Trita Parsi (Persian: تریتا پارسی‎) is the founder and current president of the National Iranian American Council, and author of the 2007 book, Treacherous Alliance: The Secret Dealings of Israel, Iran, and the United States.

Born in Iran to a Zoroastrian family, Parsi moved with his family to Sweden at the age of four in order to escape the political repression of Ayatollah Khomeini's Islamic Republic. His father was an outspoken academic who was also jailed under the reign of the Shah. As an adult, Parsi moved to the United States and studied foreign policy at the Johns Hopkins School for Advanced International Studies where he received his Ph.D. Parsi also won the University of Louisville Grawemeyer Award for Ideas Improving World Order in 2010.

Fluent in Persian, English, and Swedish, Parsi carries Iranian and Swedish passports, but he is not a citizen of the United States, where he lives as a permanent resident.

In 2002, Parsi founded the National Iranian American Council (NIAC) "to enable Iranian Americans to condemn the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks and that he has since run it as a grass-roots group aimed at strengthening their voice." Through the organization, he supports engagement between the US and Iran in belief that it "would enhance our [US] national security by helping to stabilize the Middle East and bolster the moderates in Iran." On the group's formation, he commented, "We realized that our primary thing that separates the Iranian-American community from the Jewish-American community, the Arab-American community, the Armenian-American community is that the Iranian-American community has shunned political participation."

Louis Malle (30 October 1932 – 23 November 1995) was an award-winning French film director, screenwriter, and producer. His film, Le Monde du silence, won the Palme d'Or and Academy Award for Best Documentary in 1956. He was also nominated multiple times for Academy Awards later in his career.

Malle worked in both French cinema and Hollywood, and he produced both French and English language films. His most famous films include Ascenseur pour l'échafaud (1958), Atlantic City (1981), and Au revoir, les enfants (1987).

Malle was born into a wealthy industrialist family in Thumeries, Nord, France. He initially studied political science at the Sciences-Po before turning to film studies at IDHEC instead.

He worked as the co-director and cameraman to Jacques Cousteau on the Oscar and Palme d'Or-winning (at the 1956 Academy Awards and Cannes Film Festival respectively) documentary The Silent World (1956) and assisted Robert Bresson on A Man Escaped (French title: Un condamné à mort s'est échappé ou Le vent souffle où il veut, 1956) before making his first feature, Ascenseur pour l'échafaud (released in the U.K. as Lift to the Scaffold and in the U.S. originally as Frantic, later as Elevator to the Gallows) in 1957. A taut thriller featuring an original score by Miles Davis, the film made an international film star of Jeanne Moreau, at the time a leading stage actress of the state Comédie-Française. Malle was 24 years old.

Anwar Maqsood Hameedi (Urdu: انور مقصود حمیدی) commonly known as Anwar Maqsood Urdu: انور مقصود) (born 1935) is a Pakistani playwright, poet, television host, satirist, humorist, infrequent actor and painter who has worked in the entertainment industry since the 1970s.

Born in Hyderabad State which, in 1935, was part of British Raj and, since 1948, part of India, Anwar Maqsood studied at the Gulbarga Trust School in the neighboring Maharashtra state's city of Aurangabad. Associated for many years with Pakistan Television Corporation (PTV), he served as presenter for a variety of its shows including Studio Dhai (Studio 2:30) and then Studio Ponayteen (Studio 2:45) along with Show Sha and a large number of others. His work incorporates humour, satire, and an approach to hard subjects in lighter vein.

Anwar Maqsood's family members, counted among the literati of Karachi, include his celebrity sisters Fatima Surayya Bajia, Zohra Nigah, Mrs. Kazmi and cooking expert Zubaida Tariq. His son Bilal Maqsood is a singer affiliated with the acclaimed Pakistani pop rock band Strings.