Staff
Board of Directors
STAFF
Fatema (she/hers) is the Executive Director at Muslim Justice League, where she leads MJL’s efforts to dismantle the criminalization and policing of marginalized communities under national security pretexts. She joined as Deputy Director in 2017 and increased MJL’s focus on organizing within and collaborating across impacted communities to resist and subvert surveillance. Fatema leads the StopCVE National coalition and is a leader in abolitionist organizing locally in Massachusetts. She also serves on the Board of Directors for Political Research Associates, a social justice think tank devoted to supporting movements that are building a more just and inclusive democratic society.
Fatema was a Boston Neighborhood Fellow at The Boston Foundation and has previously organized in North Carolina. Before that, she was a biomedical engineer and project manager focused on healthcare systems integration.
BOARD OF DIRECTORS
Liza Behrendt is a social justice organizer and fundraiser in Boston. She works at GLBTQ Legal Advocates and Defenders as an Individual Gifts Officer, and previously worked at Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative, Jewish Voice for Peace, and GMHC. She also organizes with Boston Worker’s Circle, Resource Generation, and the #BosCops Collective.
Nazish Riaz is a Director with a healthcare consulting company where she leads technology transformation projects for healthcare companies to reduce their carbon footprint, improve consumer experience and reduce cost. She is also a community organizer, leads educational workshops, classes and support groups with a focus on environmental justice, ending war and ending oppression against Muslims, people of color, women and immigrants. She is a relationship builder and passionate about coalition building across various groups for achieving social justice.
ALUMNI
Noraya joined MJL as the Communications Fellow to complete her M.A. practicum in Spring 2020. Her work included producing sustainable documentation and resources, creating original identity-based workshops and reflections, managing event logistics, and designing communication resources for social media campaigns for #DefundBosCops and MJL’s CVE Primer. Noraya is a Gates Millennium Scholar, has a B.A. from the University of Richmond in International Studies and Arabic, and an M.A. in International Education Management and certificate in Conflict Resolution from Middlebury Institute.
Tapti Sen completed an organizing fellowship with the Muslim Justice League. She worked with The Black Response, a new organization in Cambridge working to defund Cambridge Police Department.
Hanna Sheikh graduated with a B.A. in Anthropology from Dartmouth College and hopes to pursue graduate studies in African and Somali Studies. Broadly, her interests have revolved around the intersectionality of Black and Muslim identity and experience in Africa and in diaspora spaces abroad and she has done research on the impacts of CVE surveillance on Somali organizing in the diaspora space of Boston. She continued her work as a research fellow for two years with Muslim Justice League, researching how local Muslims are policed, surveilled, and criminalized.
Maryam Ware completed a fellowship with MJL’s Health Justice Team. Her work included assisting with planning, organizing, and facilitating Health Justice Team meetings, assisting in compiling multi-disciplinary team case studies and recommendations, and reviewing and presenting literature published about CVE in local healthcare settings. She hopes to obtain a Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology to ultimately become a Clinical Neuropsychologist, studying the neural basis of prejudice and discrimination.
Sara supported our StopCVE coalition and campaign to abolish BRIC by producing online educational materials and social media.
My name is Sumeya Ali (she/hers) and I am currently a Sociology major at Simmons University (Class of 2022). I critically evaluate social norms that have shaped our communities by investigating which of these norms are rooted in institutional oppressions. Through my artwork I challenge these guidelines that tell us some folks are inherently less deserving of a full joyous life than others. I have worked to combine my sociological studies and my artistic journey by inserting myself into art activism. I primarily work with the community of Black Muslims, both immigrant and American born. My artwork as well as my activism allows me to ground myself in the multi-dimensionality and divinity that exists within the Black Muslim population. I plan to continue combining critical theory with art to transform our world into a living masterpiece through dismantling systems of oppressions.