About Me

​Safaya Fawzi has an array of professional experiences in the equity, operations, project management, and adult education and civic technology spaces. Currently, she is a Program Manager, Entrepreneurship & Economic Development with the National League of Cities in its Center for Municipal Practice. While a graduate student at The University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy, she also worked in operations and in project management at a digital political advertising agency and a civic and government technology software company. Prior to her work in the public policy space, she worked extensively in DEI, as the Associate Director in the Office of Diversity & Inclusion at the American Bar Association (ABA), as an expert with the Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Experts Hub run by Catalyst:Ed, as a board member of the national disability inclusion training organization Kids Included Together (KIT), and for several years as a  Manager of D&I Administration at YMCA of the USA, managing service delivery and training as the first point of contact for 800+ YMCA associations. In these DEI roles, she coordinated her department's work with logistics, budgeting, administration, and Salesforce/CRM processes. She supported the execution, project management, research, and design of trainings and learning solutions on implicit bias, race and racial justice, disability, faith/religious diversity, LGBTQ+ inclusion, immigrant inclusion, and D&I primers, educating hundreds of legal professionals, nonprofit partner organization staff, and YMCA staff and volunteers.

She has a Bachelor’s degree from Wellesley College, a Master's degree in Public Policy from The University of Chicago, and she hails from Chicagoland.  

Why I have created this instructional design portfolio: 

Hi! Safaya here. I am personally and professionally interested in social and community justice, and the foundations of building justice and equity take place through meaningful education. I believe there is much we have to "unlearn" as adults, and through my own experiences, I am passionate about helping others unlearn intentionally, such as building positive practices and teaching effective ways to engage, as well as practicing them myself.  It's through this process of wanting to teach, and being fascinated by what and how we learn as we grow (especially as we become adults and learn in the workforce), that attracted me to the field of instructional design. 

As a professional working on issues of equity and public policy, having supported and directly managed the creation of multiple educational opportunities and facilitator resources for not-for-profit professionals on diversity, equity and inclusion related topics, I hope to learn the technical skills to apply my knowledge of training and learning experiences to the world of diversity & inclusion (and other types of) training.