Aly
Kassam-Remtulla

Activist, Scientist, Poet

Chicago, Illinois

Aly Kassam-Remtulla is a Program Officer in the General Program. He has a diverse portfolio of both international institutional grants and arts & culture grants in Chicago. He also undertakes special projects for the President of the Foundation, including the New Ideas Initiative.

Prior to joining the Foundation, Kassam-Remtulla was a Senior Associate at Isaacson, Miller (IM), a national executive search firm that serves mission-driven organizations. During his three years in Boston he worked primarily with universities, advocacy organizations and foundations. Before this, Kassam-Remtulla was a consultant to Lehman Brothers investment bank in London, staffer on Hillary Rodham Clinton’s senate campaign, intern with the National Network for Immigrant & Refugee Rights in Oakland, instructor in Asian American Studies at Stanford University, and research assistant for Nobel Chemistry Laureate Paul Berg.

Born in Kenya and raised in Calgary, Canada, Kassam-Remtulla has a BA with Honors & Distinction in Anthropology, Asian American Studies and Biological Sciences from Stanford University. He was a Rhodes Scholar at Balliol College, Oxford University, where he obtained his masters in Forced Migration at Queen Elizabeth House and an MBA at the Saïd Business School. Kassam-Remtulla is the recipient of the Duke of Edinburgh’s Gold Award presented by HRH Prince Phillip. He is a published poet and editor of an anthology introduced by Desmond Tutu.

He is active in the community as a Board Member of the ACLU of Illinois, Governor of the Human Rights Campaign in Washington, DC, Member of Education Committee of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, and Advisory Board Member of the Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity at Stanford University. He is active in Asian Americans/Pacific Islanders in Philanthropy and the Chicago Asian Giving Circle. Kassam-Remtulla is also on the Board of Directors of the Philadelphia-based Rainbow Endowment, founded by Martina Navratilova.