I supported and trained with the first generation of women cyclists from 2012 to 2016. During this period, the Afghan National Women's Team became internationally recognized with an exhibition in the Canadian Museum of Human Rights, National Geographic Adventure, and a nomination of the national cycling team for a Nobel Peace Prize as part of an overall bid by an Italian committee to nominate the Bike as a 'Vehicle for Peace.'

I began mountain biking in Afghanistan in 2009. I started exploring the country on my mountain bike, both as a way to experience the country differently and to interrogate the gender barrier. No Afghan women or girls were riding in Afghanistan. It was a cultural taboo, and while I heard vague rumors and stories of Afghan women riding in the south in the 1960s, there were no physical records of it to be found because the Taliban had destroyed so much history when they controlled the country. What remains is the oral history preserved by family members. The first generation of cyclists began decades later, in 2011. I started to support them in 2012 after I met their captain, Marjan Seddiqe.

Thanks to the bravery of Afghan women and girls over one decade, women's cycling grew from a handful of young women on a cycling team in Kabul to girls' teams and clubs in multiple provinces, training and racing in road cycling, mountain biking, and BMX. The sport was incredibly dangerous for women and girls and was still considered taboo by conservative Afghans at the time that Kabul fell to the Taliban in August 2021. Today, cycling is banned like all sports for Afghan girls. Under the Taliban's imposed gender apartheid edicts, almost everything is banned for women and girls; school, work, most public and private spaces, even walking in the public gardens and visiting the national park, restricting freedom of movement and outdoor access for women and girls. Today, even the sound of a woman's voice is banned. The fight to dismantle gender apartheid has only just begun. Thanks to support from the law firm Hogan Lovells, I have been able to gather testimony from Afghan athletes to submit to the UK gender apartheid inquiry and continue to fight for women's rights despite the Taliban's control of the country. 

The evacuation of Afghanistan's first generation of female cyclists and the current cycling teams took place with numerous partners and supporters and was financed by crowdfunding and individual donors. The total number is unknown, but through my efforts alongside partners, over 150 Afghans, mainly cyclists and their family members, along with human rights defenders and journalists, were evacuated and resettled into ten different countries. This group included all the original national team members and cycling leadership from Bamyan and Kabul that I knew, supported, and rode with from 2013 to 2016. While most of the day-to-day work was finished in late 2022, the most recent evacuations and resettlements occurred in the summer of 2024. The work is not over. And for those safe in the diaspora, their safety has meant the collapse of their teams, their dreams, and the right-to-ride movement that they were part of.  

From 2013 to 2018, I was a producer on the Let Media documentary Afghan Cycles, which documented the first generation of Afghan women to cycle for sport in multiple provinces and premiered at Toronto's Hot Docs Film Festival. My memoir, Mountain to Mountain, documented my first experiences mountain biking and investigating the gender barrier. I wrote several articles and acted as a field producer or logistics support for several feature and short films.