Biography:

Maryam Abdul-Kareem is the daughter of community organizers, healers, and builders. She is a strategist, coach, and cultural worker guided by a fierce love for community, justice, and healing. The daughter of organizers and healers, she carries forward a legacy of liberation rooted in compassion, faith, and care. With over a decade of experience at the intersection of philanthropy, organizing, and racial equity, Maryam partners with individuals, organizations, and movements to build more just and hopeful futures.

As a seasoned racial equity strategist and organizational consultant, Maryam has supported philanthropic institutions, nonprofits, organizers, and grassroots coalitions across the country. Her work spans participatory grantmaking, strategic planning, political education, leadership development, and community visioning—with a commitment to shifting power and resources toward those most impacted by injustice. Her facilitation style is known for its depth, clarity, and tenderness, creating spaces where vulnerability meets strategic rigor.

Maryam is the co-creator and facilitator of Antiracism in Action, an applied learning course that weaves together structural analysis, collective practice, and deep reflection. She has developed antiracist and equity frameworks across multiple sectors, facilitated transformative racial healing spaces for leaders of color, and designed programs that honor the wisdom and complexity of communities navigating harm and dreaming toward liberation.

She is also a transformative coach, trained through Coaching for Healing, Justice, and Liberation (CHJL), where she supports clients—especially women of color and movement leaders—in aligning their inner lives with their values and visions for systemic change. Her coaching practice blends strategic insight with deep care, helping people reconnect to their purpose, power, and possibility.

Maryam is a former Defending Democracy Fellow with Western States Center, an alum of the AMAL Fellowship with MuslimARC, and Grantmakers for Southern Progress. These experiences reflect her commitment to countering white nationalism, supporting southern Black-led movements, and practicing intersectional antiracism as a spiritual and strategic imperative.

In addition to her consulting and coaching, Maryam is a freelance writer and storyteller whose work explores personal and political transformation. Her writing focuses on healing, wellness, community, social justice, and the power of narrative to make meaning and move people. She contributed to 99 Clay Vessels, a creative project uplifting the stories of Muslim women, and continues to write stories that center love, dignity, and the everyday sacred through her Community Dinner writings on substack or medium .

Across all her work, Maryam remains grounded in her belief that healing is both a practice and a right—that justice is not only about systems but also about spirit, story, and our shared humanity. At the heart of everything she does is a quiet conviction: that transformation begins when we align what we believe with how we live, lead, and build together.