Nabila Alibhai

With a truly international career, Nabila has worked with international organizations and social enterprises in the USA, Switzerland, Portugal, Eastern Africa and Central Asia. Focused on creating productive, inclusive and value-based communities, Nabila has experience working with students as well as corporate and civic communities.  

Nabila is a TED Speaker and was voted one of Quartz Africa’s Top 30 Innovators in 2018. She has worked with the United Nations, the International Organization for Migration, the Aga Khan Development Network and also as a strategic communications consultant with Well Made Strategy.  She is the Founder of public space and culture lab inCOMMONS and limeSHIFT, a New York-based start-up focused on making companies more creative, connected and productive. 

Nabila has extensive experience in developing platforms to foster communication among people from different cultural backgrounds and different fields of expertise.  Her expertise stems from experience in conflict transformation, diplomacy and cultural development. 

Nabila Alibhai qualified early in Public Health at Yale University, has been a Research Fellow in MIT’s Special Programme in Urban and Regional Studies and is currently on its alumni advisory board.

• Downs International Health Research Fellow, Yale University
• Yale Stimson Fellow in International Relations and Policy, Yale University 
• Caux Scholar in Conflict Transformation, Caux, Switzerland

• Life skills 
• The relationship aesthetics and belonging
• The role of public spaces in influencing health, security, identity and pluralism

As the Head of Personal Development, Nabila Alibhai is the architect for Forward College’s three – year personal development programme.  The curriculum she delivers in Lisbon is specific to helping students transition to independence and a cooperative learning community.

• Working with Others (cooperation, leveraging diversity, optimizing teams, mitigating conflict and unconscious biases). 
• Leadership (efficiency, time management, communication styles, storytelling and public speaking and having difficult conversations) 
• Life Management  (working better and stressing less, goal setting and prioritization, wellbeing and living values)

In their second year in Paris, students explore their motivations and decisions to intentionally live with authenticity. This is the year when they embark on self-discovery oriented toward career exploration, emotional resilience and decision-making. 

The third-year curriculum is focused on career-readiness and transition to the world of work or postgraduate studies. 

• The New Normal: The Future Impacted by Coronavirus, Quartz
• Investing in Spaces: Luxury, Benevolence or Business?, The Journal of Public Space
• How Spectacular Public Art Can Heal Division and Unite Communities, Well Told Story Blog
• Citizen’s Institute on Rural Design (CIRD) & Afghanistan’s National Solidarity Programme (NSP), Project for Public Spaces 
• Syowia Kyambi, Artist Biography
• Responses to Avian & Human Influenza Threats: Progress, Analysis & Recommendations, UN System Influenza Coordinator (UNSIC) & World Bank
• Refugee Insights, Quarterly Newsletter of the Refugee Consortium of Kenya
• “UNHCR Should Purchase Local Farm Products for Refugees’ Sake”, Daily Natio
• “South Sudan Not Yet Safe for Repatriation of Refugees,” Daily Nation
• Reporting on HIV/AIDS: A Resource Directory, International Women’s Media Foundation
• Book Review: Understanding the Contemporary Middle East, Deborah Gerner, editor, Bulletin of Regional Cooperation in the Middle East, Vol. 9, Number 4, Search for Common Ground in the Middle East

• TED Talk, TED Global 
• Top 30 Quartz Africa Innovator
• MIT Special Programme in Urban and Regional Studies, Alumni Advisory Board

• Young Presidents Organization, Nairobi Forum
• Godrej Headquarters, India
• Artist as a Citizen Conference, The Juilliard School
• Solidarity Building, Reflections from Afghanistan, Massachusetts Institute for Technology (MIT) 
• Ephemeral Urbanism, Harvard Graduate School of Design
• Public Health & Public Spaces, Roxbury Community College
• The Different Faces of a Capital: The Role of Urban Planning in Creating Stability, Roundtable Kabul 2050,  French Cultural Center Kabul