Yasmeen Elham Aidinjead was born in April 1969. She was the youngest of eight children – she had six sisters and one brother.

Yasmeen was born into a comfortable middle-class family in Tehran. Her mother was never too busy to love her youngest, and all her sisters and aunts showered her with love and attention.  She was a precocious child who did well in school.  She attended the best schools and even had the opportunity to visit foreign countries.

Being the youngest child, she saw many of her older siblings leave home and go off to university in foreign lands. She missed her sisters but was always excited when they came home to visit.

With the changes that swept through Iran in 1979,Yasmeen’s life changed, and her sisters no longer could come to visit but she continued to work hard is school and even learned to ski.  However, because of the changing situation in the country, Yasmeen’s parents decided that it would be in her best interest to join her siblings abroad. So, in the fall of 1985, when she was 16 years old, Yasmeen left the land of her birth and traveled to the United States with her mother.  She ended up outside of Portland Oregon where two of her sisters lived. She quickly adapted to her new surrounding and continued to excel in school- a year and a half after she arrived in America, she graduated from Beaverton High with honors.  She then went on to Oregon State University where she studied Biochemistry and graduated with a Bachelor's of Science in 1991.  While pursuing graduate studies in Biochemistry, she realized that this was not her true calling and so decided to follow in her father’s footsteps and pursue a degree in Law.