Mahtob Mahmoody

Mahtob Mahmoody is the daughter of American born author Betty Mahmoody. Her father was an Iranian-born but American-educated doctor, Dr. Sayed Mahmoody - aka ‘Moody’. In 1987, her mother published Not Without My Daughter in which Betty claimed that she and then five-year-old Mahtob had been kidnapped from the USA in 1984 and imprisoned in Tehran by her Iranian husband. Betty escaped as she took Mahtob from Iran over the Zagros Mountains and into Turkey. The book sold 12 million copies and inspired the 1991 Hollywood film of the same name.Mahtob grew up plagued with the very real threat of being kidnapped by her father or harmed by someone who had taken up his cause. At the age of thirteen she was diagnosed with Lupus, a chronic autoimmune disease that nearly robbed her of her life. A Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Michigan State University, Mahtob Mahmoody works in the field of mental health and is an advocate for public awareness of health and welfare initiatives. She is represented by AEI Speakers Bureau and lives in Grand Rapids, Michigan.