Born in Iran in 1942, her parents relocated to England when she was a child. Eventually, they moved to the United States (New Hampshire), and by the time she was a teenager, she was a United States citizen.
She earned a bachelor’s degree in International Relations in the early 1960s, driven by an interest in global power systems and diplomacy. Straight out of college, she secured an internship in Washington, DC, where she quickly distinguished herself through discipline, intelligence, and an instinct for how influence actually worked. She devoted nearly all of her time to work, steadily building expertise in energy policy and international affairs.
Her early career began in government advisory roles focused on energy and foreign relations. By the 1970s, she had become a respected behind-the-scenes strategist, known for her directness and unwillingness to be sidelined.
Frustrated by the limitations of political institutions, she transitioned into the private sector in the late 1970s, joining an international oil company with a deeply controversial reputation—linked to environmental damage, opaque financial practices, and aggressive global expansion.
It was not a company most people tried to reform. It was one most people avoided.
Vida did not.
She rose through the corporate structure throughout the 1980s, navigating systemic sexism, geopolitical bias, and growing public scrutiny of the oil industry. By the 1990s, she had reached executive leadership. In her mid-50s, she became CEO.
At the time, the company’s reputation was heavily damaged. She changed that. Under her leadership throughout the 1990s, she forced a structural transformation of the company. She implemented strict environmental compliance standards, invested in cleaner energy research, and introduced transparency policies that initially alarmed shareholders. Many expected profitability to collapse.
Instead, the company stabilized and adapted.
What had once been widely criticized as a symbol of corporate excess gradually shifted into a more complex reputation—controversial in history, but increasingly recognized as a model for how legacy energy corporations could evolve under pressure. Vida Farhadi herself became known as a rare figure who could operate within the fossil fuel industry while actively steering it toward accountability.
Her parents passed away in the late 1990s, shortly before the world changed.
By 2002, at age sixty, she was still one of the most influential figures in global energy markets.
Then the plague came. A global pandemic—fast-moving and catastrophic—spread across the world with devastating efficiency. Within a short span of time, it wiped out approximately 99% of the global population, collapsing governments, communication systems, and international infrastructure. Entire industries ceased overnight. Oil markets, regulatory systems, and corporate networks all disintegrated into silence.
Vida was mid-travel on a corporate mission when the outbreak reached critical levels. Her flight was rerouted to Austin, Texas, as airspace restrictions, emergency landings, and medical crises grounded normal operations across the country.
Within days, the airport and surrounding facilities became a refuge for survivors. A makeshift medical station formed almost immediately, overwhelmed as the scale of the plague became undeniable.
Vida took control where she could. She organized logistics, rationed supplies, and helped impose structure on chaos. Leadership was no longer theoretical—it was survival.
She attempted to contact Washington, DC, corporate headquarters, and international partners. There was nothing. No response. No signal. No continuity of authority.
The world she had spent her entire life navigating had effectively disappeared.
When air travel proved impossible, and the last remaining pilot refused to risk flight, she turned to land transport.
The rental desk was abandoned so she just took a car.
