Originally broadcast at 2 p.m. ET Thursday, August 11, 2022.

Alia J. Bilal serves as Deputy Executive Director at the Inner-City Muslim Action Network (IMAN), a non-profit community organization based in Chicago that fosters health, wellness, and healing in the inner-city by organizing for social change, cultivating the arts, and operating a holistic health center. Alia assists and oversees the administration, strategic development, communications, and program implementation of the organization. In her over 13 years at IMAN, Alia has helped the organization grow from a small nonprofit with an operational budget under $1 million to an organization with over 100 full-time staff members, a federally qualified health center, multiple campuses in Chicago and Atlanta, and an operational budget of over $20 million.

A native of Chicago’s South Side, Alia graduated from the University of Illinois at Urbana[1]Champaign with a degree in International Studies and a concentration in Islamic World Studies. She studied Arabic and Islamic history in Cairo, Egypt, and is a graduate of the Civic Leadership Academy at the University of Chicago. She sits on the board of the Southwest Organizing Project, serves on the Steering Committee of the Black Interfaith Working Group at the Interfaith Youth Core (IFYC), and was an appointee of the Equity Advisory Council of the Chicago Commission on Human Relations.

Alia is a writer, public speaker, and spoken word artist, and on her off-time can usually be found hiking a trail or car camping in a national park with her husband and two young sons.

About Chautauqua Institution: Chautauqua Institution is a community on the shores of Chautauqua Lake in southwestern New York state that comes alive each summer with a unique mix of fine and performing arts, lectures, interfaith worship and programs, and recreational activities. As a community, we celebrate, encourage and study the arts and treat them as integral to all of learning, and we convene the critical conversations of the day to advance understanding through civil dialogue. CHQ Assembly is the online expression of Chautauqua Institution's mission.