Dilafruz Khonikboyeva

Dilafruz Khonikboyeva is the Founding Executive Director of the Home Planet Fund, funded by the largest single donation from Yvon Chouinard's Patagonia. Ms. Khonikboyeva was previously a political appointee of the US Biden-Harris Administration as a Senior Advisor at USAID around climate and development policy. She spent five years in global program leadership with the Aga Khan Development Network working across 30+ countries and a portfolio of over 1B USD. Before that, she worked for eight years in storytelling and humanitarian assistance in conflict and climate crises, including Syria, Crimea, and Nepal.

She is an Advisor to Daughters for Earth and Secretary of the Home Planet Fund Board of Directors.

She has served on the Board of her alma mater the Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter School for Peace and Conflict Resolution at George Mason University and lead the Climate Change Working Group for Women of Color Advancing Peace, Security and Conflict Transformation (WCAPS).

Ms. Khonikboyeva was selected as a Presidential Leadership Scholar by the US presidential centers and libraries of George W. Bush, William J. Clinton, George H.W. Bush, and Lyndon B. Johnson. President Bush painted her portrait and featured her in his bestselling book, "Out of Many, One - Portraits of America's Immigrants."

Ms. Khonikboyeva is Indigenous Pamiri and lived through the fall of the Soviet Union and the protracted civil war in Tajikistan.