Photography: Maria del Rio

Shakirah Monique Simley is a seasoned leader with two decades of experience in social justice and equity work. She holds a B.A. with honors from the University of Pennsylvania, a Master’s in Communications via the U.S. Fulbright Scholarship Program to Italy.

Under Shakirah’s executive leadership since 2021, BTWCSC has quadrupled in size, expanded and now serves over 6,000 vulnerable San Franciscans annually with 40 full-time staff and an $8.5 million budget.

Shakirah is the Executive Director of the Booker T. Washington Community Service Center (BTWCSC), one of San Francisco's oldest Black-led organizations with 106 years of direct service. She leads the 72,000 sq ft mixed-use facility and multi-service nonprofit, which includes a community center, child care center, senior wellness programs, and 50 units of service-enriched affordable housing for transitional aged youth. She oversees strategic direction, fundraising, management, program creation, and relations for the BTWCSC. Under Shakirah’s executive leadership since 2021, BTWCSC has quadrupled in size, expanded and now serves over 6,000 vulnerable San Franciscans annually with 40 full-time staff and an $8.5 million budget. BTWCSC is a recognized Platinum Status, Four Star Nonprofit, as designated by Guidestar and Charity Navigator.

Shakirah served as a 2023 Stanford SEERS Fellow, a Social Entrepreneur in Residence at the Haas Center for Public Service, a 2023 Warriors and Kaiser Permanente Bridging the Bay Leader, and is the 2024 winner of the San Francisco Foundation's Phyllis K. Friedman – Retha Smith Robinson Community Leadership Award and a 2025 ‘Power Forward’ honoree of PG&E and the Golden State Valkyries. She has been formally honored by the City and County of San Francisco - by the San Francisco Behavioral Health Commission, by San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee as a Good Samaritan and a Special Commendation from Mayor London Breed.

Shakirah has a proven track record of public service, including serving as the inaugural Director for the Office of Racial Equity for the City and County of San Francisco. In this role, she developed San Francisco’s first Citywide Racial Equity framework, led 54 City departments in creating Racial Equity Plans, created Budget Equity principles, and provided policy direction on equity initiatives. She also supported a citywide historic reinvestment into the Black/African American community and the cross-cultural Stand Together SF collaborative. She also served as the first Chief Equity Officer at the City’s COVID-19 Emergency Response Command Center, advocating for equitable access to testing, services, and vaccines for at-risk communities. She currently sits on the Board of Directors for SPUR.

At SF City Hall, Shakirah was a Legislative Aide for Supervisor Vallie Brown of District 5, assisting with over 30 pieces of legislation, including San Francisco's first Safe Parking Program for the vehicularly homeless, increased funding for affordable housing, a local Working Families Earned Income Tax Credit, and expanded universal access to legal aid for low-income communities.

Prior to SF City Hall, she directed community benefits programs focusing on environmental justice and equitable economic development for the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission (SFPUC), overseeing the Southeast Community Facility and Commission in Bayview Hunter’s Point and successfully advocated for and led the development of the long-awaited new facility at 1550 Evans.

Shakirah is a long-time food justice leader. Shakirah was a 2017 Exchange Fellow with Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture and the Community Programs Director and Canner-in-Residence for Bi-Rite, a family of sustainable food businesses. For over six years, she led community outreach, youth development, and philanthropy programs. Her work included a "Good Food Job" pipeline for at-risk high schoolers, supporting local sugar-sweetened beverage taxes, sponsoring EBT Market Match programs, and providing technical assistance to corner stores to sell healthier food. Her efforts led to Bi-Rite opening its second grocery retail location on Divisadero and being honored with a B Corporation’s 2016 Best for the World Award. In her tenure, she directed $1.3 million in support to over 2,500 organizations, prioritizing a good, clean, and just food system. Currently, Shakirah co-leads a citywide coalition Food and Agriculture Coalition Towards Sovereignty FAACTS, which has mobilized over 30 community-based organizations to protect over $75 million in public food access funding to help families, support local jobs, and bolster San Francisco’s broader economy.

Shakirah has always uplifted food equity and social justice issues, particularly for people of color. She has served as a technical assistance provider to Funders' Collaborative for Youth Organizing; working with young people in Philadelphia, Baltimore and New Orleans to change their school food systems. Prior to Bi-Rite, Shakirah worked with community-based organizations and indigenous groups to organize for effective, culturally competent policy initiatives that addressed social determinants of health, through her work with the Prevention Institute, and Robert Wood Johnson-funded national initiative, Communities Creating Healthier Environments (CCHE). In her hometown of New York City, after college, Shakirah served as one of the first Human Rights Fellows for the City of New York, where she co-developed an employment rights ESOL curriculum for immigrant workers and spearheaded the development of a NYC Civil Rights Oral History Documentation Project. Shakirah also served as a Just Food Community Food Education Program Chef, teaching low-income New Yorkers about local and seasonal eating in an accessible, affordable, and culturally appropriate way.

Shakirah is a graduate of La Cocina, an incubator for low-income, female food entrepreneurs of color. She formerly-owned a successful, artisanal food business, Slow Jams. In addition to commercial jam production for Bi-Rite, Shakirah still teaches adults and youth across the Bay Area about preserving food in a safe, delicious way and is a certified Master Food Preserver though the UC County Extension of San Mateo/San Francisco. In January 2017, she was recognized as one of the best jam producers in the country, winning a Good Food Award for her Royal Blenheim Apricot Preserve she produced for Bi-Rite’s private line of artisan goods, PUBLIC Label.

EDUCATION AND SERVICE

Shakirah received her undergraduate degree in Cultural Anthropology and Urban Studies with honors from the University of Pennsylvania in 2007. As a student leader, she successfully advocated for the inclusion of a United States cross-cultural analysis requirement to the College of Arts and Sciences curriculum, and prioritized issues such as minority student and faculty recruitment and retention, racial profiling, cross-cultural awareness and political activism on campus. In 2011, she was the sole recipient of a prestigious U.S. Fulbright Research and Casten Family Foundation scholarship to the University of Gastronomic Sciences (UNSIG) in Pollenzo, Italy for anthropological study, where she received her Master’s degree, cum laude. She currently serves as a visiting professor for UNISG, teaching a yearly course to Masters level students on the intersection of food systems, organizing and equity. 

Shakirah has served on several nonprofit executive boards focusing on food, public policy and social and gender justice, including: Foodwise (Board of Directors, Education Committee Chair), SPUR and Alliance for Girls. She belongs to various democratic clubs in San Francisco, including, the SF Women’s Political Committee, United Democratic Club of San Francisco, and Alice B. Toklas LGBT Democratic Club. She is a SF “dame” with Les Dames d'Escoffier International.

In 2013, Shakirah was named one of Zagat’s “30 under 30: SF Bay Area Up and Comers”. In 2015, she received a Certificate of Honor from San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee as a Good Samaritan for her neighborhood work. In 2017, she received a Special Commendation from the City of San Francisco from then-SF Board of Supervisors President London Breed for her community-based work. 

ORGANIZING

Shakirah’s first taste as a trained organizer (via the Midwest Academy) was successfully co-leading a living wage and unionization campaign for on-campus security guards at UPenn (her alma mater) and Temple, as the co-founder of Penn Student Labor Action Project, and partner with Philadelphia Jobs with Justice. Through her professional and community building pursuits, Shakirah has continued to leverage her extensive community organizing, public speaking, workshop design, and facilitation skills. In December 2016, she co-founded an organizing collaborative of people of color working in good food, called Nourish|Resist. In its first year, Nourish|Resist provided over 225 youth and local community members capacity-building activities and direct action education over delicious, lovingly-made meals, including an #UnPresidentedMeal in a public high school cafeteria, and #LoveLetterstoLegislators at a community cooking school to support California’s sanctuary law.

RELATED MEDIA

Shakirah has been featured Edible San Francisco (article + cover), KQED, Bay Area Bites, Mission Local, KALW, San Francisco Magazine, New York Times Magazine, Sunset Magazine, SF Weekly, Grist, Civil Eats, Edible Marin, The New Food Economy, and a host of other media. She is also a contributor to California Cuisine and Justice, from MIT Press.

Shakirah is an experienced, in-demand public speaker and presenter. She has also spoken at a number of major conferences and venues, including the True Cost of American Food Conference, The Commonwealth Club, B Corp Best for the World Gathering, New York City Harvest Leadership Summit, International Slow Food Youth Network Terra Madre, Real Food Media’s Good Food Rising, the La Cocina Food and Entrepreneurship Conference, MAD 5 in Copenhagen, the Stone Barns Center Young Farmers Conference, Cherry Bombe Jubilee (NYC and San Francisco) the Museum of the African Diaspora in SF and at SXSW in conjunction with National Geographic and Eater National.