Maryam Abdul-Kareem

Senior Program Manager, Catalyze Fund

Maryam is the Senior Program Manager for the Catalyze Fund, Pillars’ signature grantmaking program for Muslim-led community organizations. She is responsible for the collaborative efforts in the design, implementation,and evaluation of the fund. In her role, Maryam nurtures relationships and supports the work of visonary Muslim leaders and communities as well as contributes to the expansion of her team’s understanding of philanthropy. 

Maryam is the daughter of educators, storytellers, and community builders, and she is rooted in legacy and her Islamic faith. Prior to joining Pillars, she worked as a senior program associate for racial equity at the Meyer Foundation, where she was responsible for projects that imagined a collective vision for a just and equitable greater Washington region to guide funding support. As an anti-racism educator, she also led internal organizational efforts toward practicing antiracist values and developing equitable practices. Maryam embraces emergent ways of being like moving at a pace that honors building relationships of trust and care.

Maryam also works as a liberatory coach and strategic consultant for organizations seeking to apply a racial equity lens to their work. As such, she is committed to the vision and heart-work required to co-create systems of care and thriving communities. 

Maryam is a student of movements striving toward justice and currently lives in Baltimore, where she enjoys exploring imaginative realms through short story writing.

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.

Bushra Aljaber

Digital Media Associate

Bushra Aljaber is the Digital Media Associate at Pillars Fund, where she creates and manages content for Pillar’s social media channels. She engages Pillars grantees, fellows, trustees, partners, and champions to promote and uplift their work.

Before joining Pillars and during the COVID-19 pandemic, Bushra worked with the Los Angeles Department of Public Health on social strategy and messaging. She served more than 10+ million Los Angeles residents by creating digestible, easy-to-read, and informative social media posts on COVID safety measures and practices.

Bushra is the go-to person in her personal circle for social media strategic planning and digital storytelling. She has more than five years of experience working in social media as a freelancer and as a blogger, and has built a personal brand with more than 60,000 followers across platforms and 17,000 subscribers on Youtube.

As an immigrant, Bushra has first-hand experience with the United States immigration system. Going through the bureaucratic process of proving she was “worthy” of immigrating to the U.S. as a Muslim woman broadened her perspective on this issue and inspired her to become an advocate for Muslims and immigrants in the U.S.  

Bushra is a graduate of California State University of Northridge where she earned a BA in Multimedia Production with a minor in Interactive Marketing. 

Salwa Ansari

Director of Development

Salwa Ansari is the Director of Development at Pillars Fund, where she leads donor stewardship and is responsible for building out Pillars’ growth and fundraising strategy. She draws on two decades of experience in sales, finance, and entrepreneurship.

Salwa began her career as a Forex derivatives trader. She loved numbers and the intensity of the work but always had the urge to dedicate herself to something with more social impact. After seven years in finance, Salwa left Wall Street to volunteer for the Foundation for Sustainable Development, an NGO serving communities in Africa, India, and South America. There, she learned about nonprofit work and applied her skillset to streamline their operations. Salwa went on to combine her passion for impact work with her entrepreneurial spirit, founding Sassygoats, a diversity-focused stationery company that donates profits to charitable causes.

Wherever she is, Salwa strives to create a more equitable world for her kids and the generations to follow. She is a graduate of the University of California, Berkeley, and lives with her family in the Bay Area.

Amirah Fauzi

Program Director, Catalyze Fund

Amirah Fauzi is a Program Director at Pillars Fund, where they oversee relationships with grantee-partners and lead the outreach and coordination of Pillars’ annual grant cycle. At Pillars, Amirah manages a growing portfolio of 30+ nonprofit organizations and has facilitated the investment of more than $6 million in Muslim leaders, community-based organizations, and creatives who are helping reimagine and transform society.

Amirah brings a deep commitment to community-focused grantmaking, aiming to strengthen the internal relationships among Muslim nonprofits and external relationships with established philanthropic institutions. At the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, Amirah oversaw the distribution of Pillars’ Muslim Artist and Activist Relief Fund, a 2020 rapid response fund that distributed $41,000 to 82 artists and activists who had lost income from nationwide shutdowns.

Amirah joined the Pillars team in 2018 as a scholar and fellow with the BOLD Women’s Leadership Network, an intergenerational initiative focused on developing courageous leadership among women. Their previous experience includes training and coordinating volunteers at transitional housing organizations, teaching high school students basic coding in the Bronx, and utilizing design thinking as a brand consultant for private and nonprofit organizations.

Amirah was raised in the foothills of Appalachia, is a graduate of Middlebury College, and currently lives and paints in Chicago.

Katie Grimes

Communications Manager

Katie Grimes is the Communications Manager at Pillars Fund, where she develops organization-wide communications strategy and manages media relations, email communications, and institutional messaging.

Prior to joining Pillars, Katie served as the Communication and Creative Media Specialist at the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding (ISPU), where she designed digital fundraising campaigns and translated complex research findings into accessible content for non-academic audiences. In 2018, she co-received a Wilbur Award for her work editing ISPU’s “An America without Muslims?” video. Katie has previously worked for a feminist filmmaking website, an academic journal, and an online literary publication for individuals with visual disabilities, taking on the roles of staff writer, copyeditor, and managing editor. Her co-authored publications include “Remembering the People’s Princess,” a chapter in the interactive digital book Participatory Memory: Fandom Experiences Across Time and Space, and “A Feminist Approach to Social Media,” a video essay published in Kairos journal.

Katie is a graduate of Michigan State University where she earned a BA in Professional Writing and minors in Religious Studies and Digital Humanities.

Nadia Z Ismail

Managing Director of People and Culture

Nadia Z Ismail is the Managing Director of People and Culture at Pillars Fund, where she is responsible for fortifying people infrastructure and operationalizing culture. 

Nadia draws on nearly 10 years of experience in both Organizational Development and Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion where she has supported the building and enhancement of healthy, empowering work environments that allow organizations to grow and scale meaningfully. 

As a professional passionate in people and culture, Nadia places an emphasis on cultivating meaningful relationships in and outside of the organization where individuals feel that they are part of a community that can do their very best work.

Prior to joining Pillars, Nadia designed and implemented an internal consulting program where she enables teams’  to drive high performance and strengthen team cultures. In partnership with senior leadership, Nadia helped identify challenges and offered solutions ranging from building inclusive hiring practices to cultivating brave and safe working environments.  

Outside of work, Nadia serves as an executive board member of the Women Donors Network (WDN). She is also a steering committee member of the Jean Hardisty Initiative where she supports moving resources to Black-led movements with a long-term goal of eradicating structural inequality and eliminating the racialization of systems that uphold it. Nadia is also a member of The Social Justice Movement, a community of youth building online content geared towards empowering individuals to create social and political change. Her work can be cited in various places including WeGotNext, The Women Donors Network, Seton Hall Podcast, and Inclusion in Progress.

Nadia is a proud Ohioan, Palestinian, and Muslim born and raised in Toledo, Ohio. She got her bachelor’s from The Ohio State University in Psychology and her master’s in Industrial/Organizational (I/O) Psychology from The Chicago School of Professional Psychology. She currently lives in Southern California with her husband and daughter where she loves being outdoors, playing with her daughter and spending time with family!

Ali Reza Malik

Senior Creative Producer

Ali Reza Malik is the Senior Creative Producer at Pillars Fund, where he is responsible for shaping Pillars’ external presence through his production of graphic design, photography, and video collateral in print and digital.

Prior to joining Pillars, Ali worked in creative freelancing for over a decade, focusing on brand development, photography, and videography. His clientele grew to include Nike, Twitter, Foursquare, Viacom, Allure Magazine, and Coach, among other outlets. His work also includes editor credits on Musa Syeed’s film The Dispossessed, which was featured at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival.

Ali is an active community member in the New York Muslim community, offering creative guidance and teachings in photography. He grew up in Long Island, NY, before moving to Manhattan to pursue his undergraduate degree in Finance and Marketing at the Stern School of Business at New York University, followed by a Master of Business Administration degree at the Olin School of Business at Washington University in St. Louis. He currently lives in Brooklyn with his wife.

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 Associate

Leah Pallant is the Operations Associate 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 Associate, Catalyze Fund

Mawish Raza is the Program Associate 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.

Ahmad Saad

Executive Assistant

Ahmad Saad is the Executive Assistant at Pillars Fund, where he organizes, schedules, and coordinates meetings and problem-solves to assist the organization’s leadership team.

Before joining Pillars, Ahmad worked in various positions with institutions of higher learning, including in university admissions and higher education consulting. He has also previously worked in a variety of industries, from retail to food service. Ahmad recently served as a member of the organizing committee at REI Lincoln Park in Chicago, promoting worker rights, supporting coworkers, and advocating for collective bargaining.

When he isn’t supporting the Pillars leadership team, Ahmad manages Studio Salam, a creative co-working space in Chicago’s Bridgeport neighborhood he co-founded to provide a platform for local Muslim and minority artists. He also enjoys camping, backpacking, and exploring the outdoors in his free time.

Ahmad was born in Cairo, Egypt, and grew up in North Carolina, where he graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He currently resides in Chicago with his wife and two cats.

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 Vice 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 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.