Our Team

Kalia Abiade

Vice President, Programs

Kalia Abiade is the Vice President of Programs at Pillars Fund, where she is responsible for sharpening the organization’s strategy and collaborating across the team to execute Pillars’ mission to amplify Muslim leadership toward opportunity and justice for all people. She draws on nearly two decades of experience advocating for equity and racial justice in media, policy, and philanthropy.

Before joining Pillars, Kalia served as an organizer and policy advocate, advancing media accountability, immigrant and refugee rights, religious freedom, voter access, and civic participation. Through the Federal TRIO Programs—Upward Bound and Talent Search—she worked closely with high school students in Southwestern Virginia in their pursuit to become the first members of their families to graduate from college. Kalia began her career as a newspaper journalist and editor, and her analysis has been cited in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Nation, National Public Radio, and the Associated Press, among other outlets.

Kalia currently serves as the co-chair of the board of Grantmakers Concerned with Immigrants and Refugees, on the board of Inner-city Muslim Action Network (IMAN), and on the policy committee of Independent Sector. She is also a Change Leaders in Philanthropy Fellow with Grantmakers for Effective Organizations.

Kalia was raised in California, is a graduate of the University of Florida, and lives with her family in Chicago.

Arij Mikati

Managing Director, Culture Change

Arij Mikati is the Managing Director of Culture Change at Pillars Fund, where she designs and leads programming that challenges damaging narratives about Muslims in the U.S. and amplifies Muslim voices in artistic spaces. Her storytelling work seeks to change the lens through which Muslim stories are told to one that is authentic, complex, and honest. In her role, Arij also ensures that Pillars’ values are woven into every aspect of our leadership and programming, both internally and externally.

Arij has more than ten years of experience as a storyteller, nonprofit executive, educator, and creative consultant. Prior to joining Pillars, she led the persistence team at OneGoal, an organization whose mission is to close the degree divide by establishing a world where all children have an equal opportunity to attain their highest educational aspirations. Arij is also a devoted anti-racism educator, who, as a Social Impact Advisor for Inspire Justice and leadership team member of Chicago Regional Organizers for Anti-Racism, works to foster radically inclusive, just, intersectional spaces.

An experienced facilitator, Arij is frequently invited to moderate conversations on anti-racism, storytelling as culture change, equity in entertainment, and Muslim representation in media. Her experiences and expert insight have also been featured by Variety, Teen Vogue, NPR, Tiny Spark podcast, and Al Jazeera, among other publications.

Arij earned her BA in theatre and political science at the University of Minnesota and holds an MA in education from the University of North Carolina.

Aya Nimer

Program Manager, Culture Change

Aya Nimer is a Program Manager at Pillars Fund, where she works on developing culture change programming that advances Pillars’ mission of changing narratives around Muslims in the U.S. Her programmatic work builds on interdisciplinary artistic and scholarly approaches to care, community building, and culture change. Aya brings these approaches to her work on the Muslim Narrative Change Fellowship, the Pillars Artist Fellowship, and the Pillars Muslim Artist Database and is committed to building artist-centered programming.

Prior to joining Pillars, she worked at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, where she coordinated the development of strategic planning, budgeting, and exhibition production. Aya earned her bachelor’s degree from The University of Chicago in an interdisciplinary program focused on social theory in philosophy and allied fields. She holds a master’s degree in Humanities with a concentration in the Social History of Art. Her thesis on the Genealogy of Pharaonic Iconography traced the history of Egyptian visual culture from 1920 to 1962, documenting the use of pharaonic imagery as political symbolism. Aya is interested in the way art shapes our self-understanding and believes that in telling our stories we reclaim the ability to make meaning for ourselves in society.

Leah Pallant

Operations Manager

Leah Pallant is the Operations Manager at Pillars Fund, where she is responsible for ideating and codifying the systems and processes that keep the organization running smoothly as it grows. She moved into this position after spending three years working as a part-time Executive Assistant to the Pillars leadership team.

Leah comes from a background in healthcare and insurance advocacy. After a year in AmeriCorps, she helped oversee the initial implementation of the Affordable Care Act at Federally Qualified Health Centers in the greater Cleveland area, where she focused on navigating the system for immigrant and refugee populations. Leah consulted on the rollout of expanded Medicaid in Ohio, created culturally and linguistically appropriate resources for accessing the United States healthcare and insurance systems, and worked as a healthcare navigator with the 211 call center based at the United Way of Greater Cleveland, assisting individuals with accessing medications, care, transportation, and other support services. 

Leah comes from a small town in western Pennsylvania, received a degree in Environmental Studies from Oberlin College, and currently resides in Baltimore with her partner, their angry cat, and as many houseplants and fermentation projects as she can find room for. 

Mawish Raza

Program Manager, Catalyze Fund

Mawish Raza is the Program Manager for the Catalyze Fund, Pillars’ signature grantmaking program for Muslim-led community organizations. In this role, she supports critical management for our grantee partners by providing organizational and administrative infrastructure through data management and communication.

Before joining Pillars, Mawish developed a decade of capacity-building efforts through education, facilitation, organizing, case management, and storytelling. She served as the Director of Blended Learning for Elected Leadership at Leadership for Educational Equity, where she designed strategy and multimedia curriculum for educators pursuing elected office. Mawish also worked as a multimedia freelance director and producer, developing documentaries for ISNA, SAALT, WEAA, and Amnesty International USA. Her work has been featured by the National Museum of African American History and Culture, Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society, and EcoAmerica.

Currently, Mawish serves as a research assistant with the Cogburn Research Group (CRG), where she is designing a study that explores the socio-psychological impacts of Partition using radical digital storytelling and developing a youth education program for Harlem students that centers digital literacy and fosters personal agency through anti-racist and liberatory frameworks.

Mawish is a Master of Social Work candidate at Columbia University’s School of Social Work. She lives in New York City with her husband, where she loves hosting and cooking for new friends.

Kashif Shaikh

Co-Founder and President

Kashif Shaikh is the Co-Founder and President of Pillars Fund. In 2010, Kashif and a small group of Muslim philanthropists founded Pillars to strategically organize wealth within their communities and support American Muslim civic institutions and leaders building a more just, equitable society. For the next five years, Kashif volunteered his time and resources to grow and lead Pillars. In 2016, he was asked to be Pillars’ first full-time executive director and transitioned Pillars from a volunteer-run fund to a fully operational foundation. Under his leadership, Pillars has invested more than $9 million in Muslim community organizations and initiatives and has become a leading voice for Muslims in the United States.

At the heart of Kashif’s career in philanthropy is a dedication to promoting racial equity and creating opportunities for Muslims and communities of color to tell their stories. Prior to launching Pillars, Kashif was a program officer at the Robert R. McCormick Foundation, where he helped manage a portfolio that distributed more than $20 million annually and helped scale a variety of Chicago nonprofits working at the intersection of racial justice, poverty, and education. He also managed the Foundation’s corporate partnerships and helped develop corporate social responsibility strategies for the Chicago Tribune, Chicago Blackhawks, and Chicago Bulls, among others. His career began at the United Way of Metropolitan Chicago, where he helped develop strategies to engage the organization’s largest corporate partners.

Kashif’s expert insight and writing has been featured in The New York Times, Buzzfeed, Variety, NPR, and Vice, among others. He currently serves on the board of directors of the Peabody Awards (East Coast division), Chicago Humanities Festival, Donors of Color Network, and Mortar, a nonprofit based in his home town of Cincinnati that helps entrepreneurs from historically marginalized communities access resources to start and run successful businesses. He has been named a Philanthropy Forward Fellow by the Aspen Institute Forum for Community Solutions and Neighborhood Funders Group, a New Profit Civic Lab Entrepreneur, and an Ambassadors for Health Equity Fellow. In 2017, Crain’s Chicago Business named him to their 40 Under 40 list.

Kashif holds a BA from Ohio State University and MA from Northwestern University.

Shakeeb Alam

Pillars Fund

Shakeeb Alam is a professional investor, an entrepreneur in the commercial and nonprofit sectors, and a strategic board member. Shakeeb has worked in the institutional investment industry for 25 years, with experience across public and private markets. For the last 12 years, Shakeeb has built and run a leading, public-markets-focused investment firm. Currently, his firm manages investments for an array of mission-driven organizations including philanthropic foundations, universities, museums, and other institutional investors.

Shakeeb is the Co-Founder and Board Chair of Pillars Fund. At Pillars, Shakeeb is deeply engaged in setting overall vision, developing strategy, and mentoring the leadership team. Shakeeb was instrumental in launching Pillars as a volunteer-led community fund in 2010 and then reimagining and relaunching Pillars in 2016 as a fully staffed philanthropic organization.

With his guidance, Pillars has built deep partnerships with a range of mission-aligned stakeholders including American Muslim community philanthropists, leaders in institutional philanthropy, and preeminent media corporations. Since its inception, Pillars has invested millions of dollars into Muslim community organizations and initiatives, supporting hundreds of Muslim civic and creative leaders across the United States.

Shakeeb also serves on the board of directors of the University of Illinois Foundation (UIF), the university system’s private foundation. He currently serves as Chairman of UIF’s Investment Committee, which oversees the Investment Office and its $2.5 billion endowment. At UIF, Shakeeb has played a key role in rebuilding the Investment Office. In 2021, he chaired the search committee to hire the foundation’s new Chief Investment Officer.

Shakeeb’s long-standing commitment to social change and nonprofit leadership includes current and previous service on many other boards, committees, and councils, including Demos, Hartford International University, Harvard Divinity School, A Better Chicago, The Michael J. Fox Foundation, Interfaith America, and the Justice and Society Program of the Aspen Institute.

Shakeeb earned a BS from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and an MBA from the Harvard Business School.

Saleemah Abdul-Ghafur

Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

Saleemah Abdul-Ghafur is the Communications Division director and chief of staff in the Office of the CCO at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Saleemah is an accomplished leader with extensive experience in global policy, advocacy, and communications. Before joining the foundation, Saleemah served as the founding director of the African Leaders Malaria Alliance (ALMA), which comprises every sitting African head of state and government. ALMA developed a diplomatic apparatus based on accountability to generate African-owned and African-led ways to accelerate malaria elimination and improve health outcomes for women and children. In this role, Saleemah functioned as a combined chief of staff and chief communications officer. Additionally, Saleemah played a key role as director for the United Nations Secretary General’s Special Envoy for Malaria.

Saleemah has also been advising African heads of state on the End Malaria Council (EMC) which is co-chaired by Bill and Ray Chambers. This includes briefing leaders on key trends and new data and policy related to the global malaria burden and presenting strategic opportunities to expand access to lifesaving commodities.

Previously, Saleemah was an associate director of Corporate Volunteerism at Hands on Atlanta and has served as a consultant to nonprofits and governmental organizations on projects focused on alleviating poverty through interfaith dialogue and action programs.

Saleemah is also a community leader with a strong commitment to and passion for civic engagement through activism, volunteerism, and advocating for gender equality in Muslim communities in the U.S. and abroad. In her free time, Saleemah is a writer and speaker who chairs a nonprofit, non-partisan organization working to boost civic engagement in the American Muslim Community.

Deana Haggag

Andrew W. Mellon Foundation

Deana Haggag is a Program Officer in Arts and Culture at The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

Prior to joining the foundation in May 2021, she was the President & CEO of United States Artists, a national arts funding organization based in Chicago, IL. During her tenure, USA saw unprecedented growth, expanding its Fellowship award program, launching the Berresford Prize, and developing coalition efforts to advance support for individual artists most notably including Artist Relief, a $25 million emergency initiative to support artists facing dire financial circumstances due to COVID-19, and Disability Futures, an initiative aimed at increasing the visibility of disabled creative practitioners across disciplines and geography and elevating their voices individually and collectively.

Before joining USA in February 2017, she was the Executive Director of The Contemporary, a nomadic and non-collecting art museum in Baltimore, MD, for four years. In addition to her leadership roles, Deana lectures extensively, consults on various art initiatives, contributes to cultural publications, and has taught at institutions such as Johns Hopkins University and Towson University. She is on the Board of The Underground Museum and Pillars Fund, as well as the Artistic Director’s Council of Prospect.5 and Advisory Council of Recess. She received her MFA in Curatorial Practice from the Maryland Institute College of Art and a BA from Rutgers University in Art History and Philosophy.

Nancy A. Khalil

University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

Nancy A. Khalil is an Assistant Professor in the Department of American Culture at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, with an appointment in the Arab and Muslim American Studies Program. Her research broadly focuses on the politics of the idea of American Islam and her forthcoming manuscript is on the profession of the Imam in America. Her academic work has been supported by several foundations, including the National Science Foundation, Social Science Research Council, MSA National, IIIT, and the Islamic Scholarship Fund. She completed her PhD in anthropology at Harvard University, followed by postdoctoral fellowships at Yale’s Center on Race, Indigeneity and Transnational Migration and the University of Michigan’s College of Literature, Science and the Arts.

Dr. Khalil previously served on the board of directors for Islamic Relief USA and the Muslim Justice League. Before academia, she was the Muslim Chaplain at Wellesley College. She is committed to serving the American Muslim community as a translator and bridge between academia and public service.

Noorain Khan

Ford Foundation

Noorain Khan is Director of the Ford Foundation’s Office of the President, where she oversees the foundation’s global discretionary grantmaking and leads cross-foundation strategic projects and initiatives that emerge from the President’s priorities. A member of the foundation’s program leadership, Noorain served as a key partner for the President on the foundation’s historic $1B social bond offering. Noorain also oversees the foundation’s efforts in disability inclusion, including global grantmaking, operational oversight, and philanthropic sector engagement. Her leadership on disability at Ford is the subject of a Harvard Law School case study on public sector leadership.

Before joining Ford in 2015, Noorain was chief of staff to the CEO and co-founder of Teach for All and founder of Teach for America and was also an attorney at Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz.

Noorain serves on the board of Girl Scouts of the USA, where she is a Vice Chair and a member of the Executive Committee. She has also served on the boards of Libraries Without Borders, the New York Women’s Foundation, the Brooklyn Children’s Museum, and the Association of American Rhodes Scholars.

Noorain has received the George Parkin Service Award for outstanding contributions to the Rhodes Trust and was honored by Rice University’s Center for the Study of Women, Gender, and Sexuality with its Distinguished Alumna Award. She appeared on the Forbes 30 Under 30 list for law and policy in 2014 and is a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Noorain earned a JD from Yale Law School, where she was a PD Soros Fellow; an MPhil in migration studies from Oxford, where she was a Rhodes Scholar; and a BA from Rice University.

Rami Nashashibi

Inner-City Muslim Action Network (IMAN)

Dr. Rami Nashashibi is a MacArthur Fellow, a Doctor of Sociology from the University of Chicago, and the founder and Executive Director of the Inner-City Muslim Action Network (IMAN), a nonprofit organization incorporated in 1997 that fosters health, wellness, and healing on Chicago’s South Side & Atlanta’s west end by organizing for social change, cultivating the arts, and operating a holistic health center.

As a community leader building bridges across racial, religious, and socioeconomic divides to confront the challenges of poverty and disinvestment in urban communities, Rami has successfully unified a diverse set of constituencies around a shared focus of social justice. He serves on the board of directors of the Margaret Casey Foundation and in 2020, Rami made his debut as musician, song-writer, and executive producer of “THIS LOVE THING,” a soul-stirring LP. The album’s first single, “Mama Please,” was dedicated to raising the profile of and advocating for Cariol’s Law, legislation which passed in late 2020 to help transform police accountability in Buffalo, New York. He has worked with several leading scholars in the area of globalization, African American studies, and urban sociology and has contributed chapters to edited volumes by Manning Marable and Saskia Sassen.

Rami has lectured around the world on a range of topics related to American Muslim identity, community organizing, and social justice issues and has received many prestigious community service and organizing honors. He has been featured in several prominent media publications including the New York Times, the Washington Post, The Atlantic, the Chicago Tribune, and multiple stories on PBS, CBS, and National Public Radio. Rami has also taught at the Chicago Theological Seminary, where he was a visiting professor of the Sociology of Religion and Muslim Studies.

Rashid Shabazz

Critical Minded

Rashid Shabazz is a visionary cultural communications strategist and advocate. He is the inaugural Executive Director of Critical Minded, a grantmaking and advocacy initiative founded in 2017 by the Ford Foundation and Nathan Cummings Foundation to support cultural critics of color in the United States. Critical Minded is devoted to fostering a vibrant cultural ecosystem that celebrates the multiplicity of perspectives from critics of color. Shabazz joins Critical Minded following a role as the Chief Marketing and Storytelling Officer for Color of Change, where he led the organization’s narrative and communications work. Shabazz has over two decades of working in philanthropy and the nonprofit sector. As a Senior Fellow with Fenton Communications, Shabazz served as a lead account executive for One Nation, a national initiative to shape accurate public perceptions of American Muslims. As a writer, Shabazz’s words have been featured in several publications including the Root, BET.com, Ebony, and Huffington Post. He is a founding member of the Blackout for Human Rights Collective—producing work such as #MLKNOW and #Justice4Flint. He received his bachelor’s degree in English from George Mason University, and holds a master’s degree in African studies from Yale University and a master’s in Journalism from Columbia University.

Kashif Shaikh

Pillars Fund

Kashif Shaikh is the Co-Founder and President of Pillars Fund. In 2010, Kashif and a small group of Muslim philanthropists founded Pillars to strategically organize wealth within their communities and support American Muslim civic institutions and leaders building a more just, equitable society. For the next five years, Kashif volunteered his time and resources to grow and lead Pillars. In 2016, he was asked to be Pillars’ first full-time executive director and transitioned Pillars from a volunteer-run fund to a fully operational foundation. Under his leadership, Pillars has invested more than $9 million in Muslim community organizations and initiatives and has become a leading voice for Muslims in the United States.

At the heart of Kashif’s career in philanthropy is a dedication to promoting racial equity and creating opportunities for Muslims and communities of color to tell their stories. Prior to launching Pillars, Kashif was a program officer at the Robert R. McCormick Foundation, where he helped manage a portfolio that distributed more than $20 million annually and helped scale a variety of Chicago nonprofits working at the intersection of racial justice, poverty, and education. He also managed the Foundation’s corporate partnerships and helped develop corporate social responsibility strategies for the Chicago Tribune, Chicago Blackhawks, and Chicago Bulls, among others. His career began at the United Way of Metropolitan Chicago, where he helped develop strategies to engage the organization’s largest corporate partners.

Kashif’s expert insight and writing has been featured in The New York Times, Buzzfeed, Variety, NPR, and Vice, among others. He currently serves on the board of directors of the Peabody Awards (East Coast division), Chicago Humanities Festival, Donors of Color Network, and Mortar, a nonprofit based in his home town of Cincinnati that helps entrepreneurs from historically marginalized communities access resources to start and run successful businesses. He has been named a Philanthropy Forward Fellow by the Aspen Institute Forum for Community Solutions and Neighborhood Funders Group, a New Profit Civic Lab Entrepreneur, and an Ambassadors for Health Equity Fellow. In 2017, Crain’s Chicago Business named him to their 40 Under 40 list.

Kashif holds a BA from Ohio State University and MA from Northwestern University.

Sameer Shamsi

Houlihan Lokey

Sameer Shamsi is a Managing Director and the Head of Secondary Advisory at Houlihan Lokey. Previously, he led secondary activities in the Americas for Credit Suisse and prior to that, worked in the investment banking divisions of Evercore and UBS. In his 20-year professional services career, Sameer has advised corporate and institutional clients globally on a variety of strategic matters and financial transactions.

Sameer is an active participant in the startup ecosystem. He serves as a mentor to entrepreneurs and is an advisor to multiple companies in the healthcare, education, and financial technology sectors.

Sameer is passionate about civic engagement and human capital development, and is actively involved with a variety of nonprofit organizations focused on building the next generation of civic leaders. Sameer has been a supporter of the Pillars Fund since the organization’s early days. A Chicago native, Sameer now lives on the East Coast. Sameer holds an MBA from Harvard Business School and a BA from Columbia University.