Idrissa Simmonds-Nastili

Idrissa Simmonds-Nastili is a writer, experience designer, and love and liberation executive coach. As Senior Vice President with the Pahara Institute, she leads the teams responsible for data and evaluation, program operations, network effect, and design of all institute programming. She partners with the rest of the leadership team on growth strategy and network impact. She has curated, designed, and facilitated programming for over 1,000 senior leaders and change agents in education and social impact, and innovated Pahara's approaches to design and delivery to incorporate a greater focus on wellness. These approaches have contributed to the vast majority of fellows rating Pahara as the top leadership development experience they have ever had.  As a certified professional coach, she supports dozens of social impact executives in values alignment and leading through a lens of love and liberation. Prior to her work with Pahara, her professional and lived experiences bridged Canada, West Africa, and the United States, with a focus on social justice curriculum, teaching, human capital development, recruitment, and teacher development. During her tenure with Uncommon Schools, she grew their landmark Summer TEaching Fellowship, focused on the recruitment and retention of black and brown teachers, from ten student teachers in one region to over two hundred across the entire network. Her writings on grief, race, identity and joy can be found in Vogue.com, WIRED Magazine, O, The Oprah Magazine, and elsewhere.  An East New York, Brooklyn native, she grew up in Surrey, BC and now calls the Bay Area home. She is committed to building spaces of community and belonging wherever she goes.