Sumaiya Zama

Sumaiya Zama is a service-oriented researcher, community advocate, and social impact strategist with extensive experience working in youth advocacy, civil rights, and non-profit organizations. Her writings and work center around themes of faith, coalition building, and movement building.

Sumaiya began her career as an inner city youth worker for the City of Cambridge Massachusetts where she worked with refugee and immigrant youth. She then established the first Youth Advocacy department dedicated to Muslim youth in the state at the Massachusetts chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-MA) where she worked with young Muslims, families, educators, and religious leaders to build power in and understanding of the Muslim community.

Sumaiya has a dual Master’s Degree in Islamic Studies from Columbia and Aga Khan University where she produced research on the impacts of technological modes of policing and surveillance on young Muslims in New York City. She is the recipient of the first Aga Khan dual-degree fellowship.

Currently, Sumaiya works for the Bridgespan Group, where she works to deliver digital leadership development tools to nonprofit CEOs and executives. In this work, she is deeply passionate about helping BIPOC-led organizations access knowledge and capacity building supports in order to achieve their organizational goals and missions,