Sadaf Ali is a former television and radio news reporter and has worked for mainstream and ethnic media in Ohio and Michigan. Sadaf earned her Bachelor's degree from the University of Illinois at Chicago in English. She earned her Masters in Broadcast Journalism from Columbia College-Chicago, examining the failures of the capital punishment system in Illinois. She earned her Doctorate in Communication from the Department of Communication at Wayne State University. Her research focused on race, ethnicity, and the representation of BIPOC people in news media. 

Sadaf has been an active member of unions since 2008. As a graduate student, she was a member of the Graduate Employees’ Organizing (GEO) Union. As a faculty member, Sadaf has been an active member of EMU-AAUP since 2012. She was part of the social media team and ran the Twitter and Instagram accounts for the Union while faculty were on strike in 2022.