An independent consultant who works with nonprofit organizations in the areas of strategic planning, organizational development, training/curriculum design and implementation, research and public policy analysis.
Zahida Pirani is an independent consultant who works with nonprofit organizations in the areas of strategic planning, organizational development, training/curriculum design and implementation, research and public policy analysis. She is an experienced trainer, facilitator, community organizer, researcher and a consensus builder with a history of promoting collaboration between labor unions and community organizations. Zahida has worked intensely on issues concerning immigration, workers’ rights, education reform and civic engagement. She has worked with organizations such as SEIU Local 32BJ, AFSCME DC-37, the Laborers, Make the Road New York, the New York Immigration Coalition, Coalition for Educational Justice and Hunter College School of Social Work.
Zahida’s recent past includes working to build the New York Civic Participation Project (NYCPP, a project of La Fuente, Inc.), a labor-community partnership that organizes and develops leadership in working class communities of color throughout New York City. As a community organizer in Queens, Zahida focused on promoting rank and file union and community member leadership in some of the country’s most diverse neighborhoods. Through this work, she helped to establish NYCPP’s unique organizing model and forged a new path for multi-ethnic, multi-racial organizing in the area. As NYCPP’s project director, Zahida brought together labor and community organizations to work together on city-wide campaigns, to organize together at the grassroots level and to create joint trainings to build leadership among their respective members. Consistent with her passion in advancing such leadership, she also oversaw the creation of NYCPP’s Leaders Advisory Council, a body of neighborhood representatives that advise the Project on programmatic and campaign work.
Prior to her work with NYCPP, Zahida worked on civil rights issues facing the South Asian and Muslim communities after 9/11. She has also taught as an adjunct professor at CUNY’s Murphy Institute for Worker Education and Labor Studies.
Zahida just completed the Revson Fellowship at Columbia University. She is a graduate of the Coro Immigrant Civic Leadership Program and has received awards from DC-37’s Asian Heritage Committee and the Queens Progressive Democratic Club. Zahida holds a Bachelors degree from U.C. Berkeley and an M.A. in Social and Cultural Anthropology from the New School for Social Research.
For further information, please contact:
Todd Wilson
Strategic Communications Director
p – 516.237.8634
e – twilson@adelphi.edu