Former Islamic Center of Pittsburgh director Wasi Mohamed changes roles
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Wasi Mohamed has moved on from his position as executive director of the Islamic Center of Pittsburgh, but he remains a staunch advocate for racial justice.
Mohamed is now the Pittsburgh director of community entrepreneurship for Forward Cities, an economic justice initiative based in Durham, N.C.
“I wanted to transition and work in economic justice a little bit more, which has a learning curve that I really needed to commit to, especially in the lens of entrepreneurship,” Mohamed said in a phone interview from Orlando, Fla., where he was attending a human rights conference. “What does [economic justice] mean in the Pittsburgh region? What are the inequities that exist and how can we address them? How do we ensure that the entire region thrives by including all of its residents in the economic growth of the region?”
Mohamed started last January and works out of an office at the Homewood Civic Engagement Center as well as one at Work Hard Pittsburgh in Allentown, where he focuses on underserved minorities.
He is the incoming chair of the Governor’s Commission on Asian Pacific-American Affairs, devotes time to Welcoming Pittsburgh, and recently joined the ACLU’S state board of directors. Mohamed has also started a Master of Public Management program at Carnegie Mellon University.
When Mohamed was earning a degree in neuroscience at the University of Pittsburgh, he had an eye on going to medical school. He started an initiative to have Pitt students run a food pantry at the Islamic Center as well as running youth programs. The day after he graduated in 2015, he began working as the center’s executive director.
After four years as the longest-tenured executive director in the Islamic Center’s history, Mohamed attended a board meeting at the center on the morning of Oct. 27. He planned on resigning during the meeting. But a tragedy that morning changed those plans: the mass shooting at the Tree of Life synagogue in Squirrel Hill.
”I ended up bringing my board [members] with me to the Tree of Life immediately,” he said.
In the aftermath of the shooting, Mohamed solidified his reputation as a charismatic and unifying figure in the Pittsburgh community, raising $70,000 for the victims in the first two days following the attack. He would go on to raise close to a quarter-million dollars.
Mohamed stayed on at the Islamic Center for the remainder of the year and made his departure official at the end of January.
“We only have a handful of positions in the Muslim community that are paid positions that we can have our leaders learn and grow from,” said Mohamed. “Eventually I just made the decision that I needed to vacate the space to allow other leaders to grow. I did my best to empower other leaders while I was there, but nothing can do that like allowing somebody the full-time job to work on it.”
Mohamed remains an active volunteer and member of the Islamic Center.
“It’s crazy times,” he said. “The people who are kind of working against our communities are working very hard so I’ve got to at least keep up with them. I’ll hopefully work a little bit harder if possible.”