Mariam Saleem Farooqi is a Heritage and Tourism Management Specialist with Manāra Policy & Practice, bringing over a decade of experience in cultural heritage safeguarding, sustainable tourism development, and creative entrepreneurship across Pakistan. Her work centers on shifting focus from profit to people, ensuring heritage preservation serves communities and advances equity. Most recently, Mariam developed and taught curriculum for tourism development degree programs at NUST Business School and RIPHAH Institute of Hospitality and Culinary Arts in Islamabad. With UNESCO Pakistan, she managed cultural heritage projects across Sindh, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Gilgit-Baltistan, and federally administered areas, including World Heritage Sites at Mohenjo Daro, Makli Necropolis, Rohtas Fort, and Taxila. She provided technical support to provincial and federal governments on implementing UNESCO Conventions, leading to the development of Sindh's intangible cultural heritage database in 2022 and the successful inscription of borendo (an ancient clay wind instrument from the Indus Valley Civilization) to UNESCO's List of Intangible Cultural Heritage in Need of Urgent Safeguarding in 2025. She served as Culture Sector Lead for the 2022 Post Disaster Needs Assessment following Pakistan's devastating floods, marking the first time culture was included as a separate sector in a PDNA for Pakistan and developing methodologies to quantify loss and recovery needs for culture and tourism. She led the Mapping Arts and Artisans report for the British Council, examining the role of entrepreneurs, traditional artisans, and academia across twelve Pakistani cities. She has worked with mountaineers Sirbaz Khan and Saad Munawar on community development for high-altitude guides in northern Pakistan, contributing to the formation of an all-Pakistan mountain guides governing body. Earlier, she worked in the Asian Art Department at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and excavated at the ancient Roman site of Aphrodisias in Turkey, a joint NYU-Oxford project inscribed on the World Heritage List in 2017. Her expertise spans heritage education, museum programming, community engagement for heritage protection, cultural diplomacy, and sustainable tourism. She has documented colonial and post-colonial oral histories with The Citizens Archive of Pakistan, worked on India-Pakistan cultural exchange projects for children, and served as research mentor for the Islamabad Biennale Organization in 2025. She has presented research on Sikh art and architecture and critiqued curatorial practices of Ancient Near Eastern art at the Royal Anthropological Institute's conference at the British Museum. Mariam holds a Master's degree in the History of Art and Archaeology from New York University's Institute of Fine Arts as a Fulbright Scholar, and a Bachelor's degree in Humanities from the Lahore University of Management Sciences. At Manāra, she advises on heritage preservation strategies, sustainable tourism frameworks, museum and curatorial practice, and initiatives that connect cultural heritage to community resilience and social equity.