Episode 1: Zahra Billoo

It’s finally here! The first episode of Rockwood’s new podcast, with alum and CAIR SF-BA Executive Director Zahra Billoo. Zahra dropped by our offices to talk about joy, family, privilege, music, practicing resilience, and much, much more.

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EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

joi foley: Hi, and welcome to the very first episode of Rockwood’s Leading From The Inside Out podcast. My name is joi foley. I’m Rockwood’s senior marketing and communications manager.

joi foley: Before we get to our interview with alum Zahra Billoo, we have just a few notes about the podcast. This is Rockwood’s first-ever podcast, and we are so excited to be sharing leadership with new audiences in this new medium but, as with anything new, we do have a bit of a learning curve. There are some technical issues, so we hope that you can be understanding and patient with us as we work through some of that. I’ll be your host for these first few episodes, and then the whole staff of Rockwood will be sharing hosting duties, including our CEO, Darlene Nipper. We will also be experimenting with different types of content alongside the alum interviews, so if there’s something you’d like Rockwood to cover in this podcast, just let us know. With that, here’s our show.

joi foley: Our guest for today’s episode is alum Zahra Billoo. Zahra is executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, San Francisco Bay Area office, the oldest and one of the largest CAIR chapter offices. Under Zahra’s leadership, CAIR-SFBA has filed lawsuits against the United States Department of Justice, Abercrombie & Fitch, and Southwest Airlines representing American Muslims facing discriminatory treatment. CAIR-SFBA has also significantly expanded its capabilities to provide know-your-rights sessions on a nearly weekly basis to mosques and community members in the San Francisco Bay Area while also providing direct legal representation to Bay Area residents facing numerous civil rights violations.

joi foley: Zahra has appeared on MSNBC, NPR, and the San Francisco Chronicle, and even on Fox News. She was a speaker at the historic Women’s March in Washington, DC in January 2017. Zahra received the 2017 Human Rights Award from the Society of American Law Teachers and was featured in the January 2018 Chronicle of Philanthropy cover story on how millennials lead. Outside of her work with CAIR, Zahra bakes birthday cakes for foster children through Cake4Kids and is a coordinator for Project Feed, a monthly homeless feeding effort in downtown San Francisco. Zahra is currently in Rockwood’s Lead Now California Fellowship, but she’s been through a few fellowships and programs with us. When I spoke with Zahra in February at our office in Oakland, our conversation started there.

joi foley: Okay, so the first question is you’ve been through two Rockwood Fellowships, but you’ve been total eight sessions, we counted, so why do you keep returning to Rockwood?

Zahra Billoo: I was initially introduced to Rockwood by other leaders who said, “Look, we see the path that you’re going down, and we know that you’re going to need help to sustain yourself and the work that you’re doing in the long run. Why don’t you check out Rockwood?” That was my first introduction to The Art of Leadership. After that, I was invited to join a Fellowship, and what I appreciated about the opportunity to do a Fellowship was that it wasn’t just training. It was training plus community, and so the relationships, the friendships that I made in my participation during Fellowship for a New California are still people I rely on, I call, and that I’m excited to see when I’m at events and out doing this work.

Zahra Billoo: Fast-forward several years, and we have the 2016 election. It’s not like civil rights and human rights weren’t already challenging before the 2016 election, but the problems became so much more exaggerated. So much of the deep-rooted racism and white supremacy in our country was unveiled, and the pace at which many of us that were already in the work had to change to was just unprecedented. When the opportunity to do another Fellowship and meet new people doing this work in this moment and relearn some of the Rockwood practices came about, I couldn’t say no. Just a couple of days ago when I was thinking through how to process a trigger, I was so grateful for all of the training that I’ve done with Rockwood now.

joi foley: Do you have any favorite memories of any of your Rockwood experiences or moments that were really important to you?

Zahra Billoo: I remember one of the nights of the Fellowship parties where there was a particular one in the second, in the Lead Now Fellowship, where everybody just let loose