Ali is the Senior Development Coordinator at CMAA- a role in which she has served since 2019. Together with other members of the development team, Ali works on all things fundraising including: managing CMAA’s grant portfolio, planning special events, community engagement, and individual giving. Ali was first exposed to issues of migration and refugee work through her time living in the country of Georgia, where she worked and lived with internally displaced persons who had been forcibly displaced from their homes as a result of the 2008 Georgia- Russia war. 

 

Ali has many years of non-profit experience- joining CMAA from Catholic Charities’ Refugee Resettlement Department where she worked as a Case Manager to assist recently arrived refugees to settle in Chicago. Ali earned her Bachelor’s degree in History from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and also holds a Master’s degree in International Affairs from the George H.W. Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas A & M University where she focused on issues of economic development, foreign aid, refugees and migration- with a focus on the Middle East and Afghanistan. 

 

FUN FACT | While Ali considers herself a Midwesterner through and through- she was actually born in Little Rock, Arkansas and spent her childhood years there.