
Fellow, The Centre for Conscious Design, Senior Community Outreach Specialist at Melissa Johnson Associates, Community Advisor at Garra
Ali is a multilingual community development and engagement strategist, with experiences across continents and proven records of shifting systemic power dynamics through a people-centered approach to policy and placemaking.
She worked for nearly a decade with diverse, multicultural populations in Latin America, Spain, Africa, and the US. She has strong facilitation and communication skills with communities comprised of mixed cultures and ethnicities and is fluent in Spanish, Portuguese, and proficient in Italian.
She conducts and strategizes community engagement for large scale urban planning developments in New York City, is a community issues advisor at Garra – a nonprofit that advocates for the economic development of Brazilian immigrant women living in New York, and is a fellow at the Center for Conscious Design.
Ali holds a Master in Urban Planning from Columbia University, focused on Community and Economic Development, and wrote her thesis about the role of conflicts to enable community participation. She also holds a professional degree in Architecture and Urbanism from the University of Sao Paulo (Brazil) and is a Specialist in City Management and Revitalization from the University of Castilla La Mancha (Spain).