Getting to Know Zakiyyah

Zakiyyah Ali is the great-great granddaughter of Boss Brooks, enslaved, and Ms. Mary Ingram. She is also the great-granddaughter of Alabama sharecroppers, Mr. Stacie and Maggie Lampley, and the granddaughter of Ms. Mary Peoples. 

Zakiyyah is a career educator, student of life, and a proud, two-time graduate of Virginia State University. She is currently pursuing a doctorate from Howard University in Educational Leadership and Policy Studies and has recently completed the Urban Superintendent’s Academy with the national School Superintendents Association (AASA). 

Additionally, Zakiyyah is a dynamic educational consultant who coaches and trains school district leaders, nationwide and internationally, and community-based organizations through her consulting company, Zakiyyah Ali Educational Consulting, LLC.   Her focus is pedagogical transformation that targets beliefs, policies, practices, and strategies that impact and address race and equity disparities that have a disproportionate impact on Black students, communities, and other vulnerable groups. 

As an educator, Zakiyyah is a permanently licensed Social Studies teacher, grades 7-12 via New York States Education and she taught in the New York City Department of Education for 15-years.  Zakiyyah has also impacted the lives of her former Undergraduate and Graduate students at New York University and Columbia University. 

Lastly, Zakiyyah in the founder of the Non-Profit, Rebuilding Timbuktu, a virtual, intergenerational, read-aloud, reading group whose goal is rebuilding Black libraries and Black consciousness by encouraging readers and educators to integrate and include the work and texts of Black authors into their reading and pedagogical practices intentionally and primarily. 

In her spare time, Zakiyyah immerses herself in the histories of Black people domestically and globally, reading, singing, dancing, and hanging out with family and friends.