Zakiyah Ansari is the Advocacy Director of the New York State Alliance for Quality Education (AQE), a leading statewide organization that has fought for educational equity for the last decade. Appointed to Mayor Bill de Blasio’s Transition Committee, she has addressed parents, educators, elected officials, and administrators across the United States about the importance of organizing parents and communities in schools. She is a co-initiator of a new, national movement, Journey for Justice, composed of grassroots community-based organizations representing youth, parents, and intergenerational organizations that are impacted by the closing, turnaround, and charter expansion of schools in communities of color. She was interviewed for the February 2013 edition of American Prospect (“Pushing Arne Duncan to Fast Forward”); has appeared on MSNBC’s weekly national program, Melissa Harris-Perry; was a panelist on the City & State and Schoolbook panel on education; and is one of the parent voices in the film Parent Power, produced by the Annenberg Institute for School Reform. She resides in the East Flatbush neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York, and is the mother of eight children and a grandmother of three.
