Founder

Saghar Erica Kasraie is the Founder and Executive Director of LIVING WATER Productions. Iran-born American Middle East expert, human rights activist, award-winning filmmaker, and former Congressional advisor whose work sits at the intersection of storytelling and policy. A passionate voice for vulnerable religious minorities — especially women and children — she creates short films and leads advocacy initiatives focused on Freedom of Religion or Belief, Iran's pro-democracy movement, and diaspora mobilization. Fluent in English and Farsi, Erica came to believe through her own experience learning English through American film, that storytelling changes hearts and minds more profoundly than policy alone ever can. From the halls of Congress to international film festivals, she channels that conviction into work that amplifies silenced voices, unites diaspora communities, and builds bridges between lived experience and lasting change.

Erica has been a business, policy, media, and film consultant and was the Middle East Advisor to a prominent senior member of the U.S. House of Representatives Armed Services Committee. She organized and supervised Congressionally-hosted global conferences in Washington for activists to plan the constitutional future of a free, democratic Iran. Before this, Erica developed a decade of expert knowledge of Iranian political, economic, and social conditions.

Erica and her family fled to Italy shortly after the 1979 Islamic Revolution, then settled in the Washington, D.C. area. She holds a B.S. in Biology from Virginia Commonwealth University and has served as an FBI laboratory scientist. Along with her other civil society work, she works with the Iranian underground church as well as serving as Outreach Director for the Jude Project, a Reformed mission providing materials to Christian leaders in Iran. Erica has appeared on Fox News, CBN, Newsmax, One America News, Al-Arabiya News, Alhurra TV, and Secure Freedom Radio.