Idrissa is a leadership strategist, experience designer, and artist who has spent over fifteen years advancing equity and capacity-building across education, philanthropy, and social change sectors. Her life's work is to create powerful containers of learning and belonging where transformation can occur, and possibility can seed. At Pahara she leads the team responsible for Fellow experience and network engagement. Since joining the organization in 2015 she has led the vision, strategy, design and evaluation of Pahara's core programming, including the Pahara Fellowship; Pahara's work on Vitality; Leadership Team Seminars; and all other post-Fellowship offerings. She has trained and coached moderators for over a decade, and leads moderator development, evaluation, and deployment. Prior to joining Pahara she served on Uncommon Schools' Organizational Learning team, where she built and scaled foundational equity-driven programs that bolstered teacher and school leader recruitment and retention. She began her career in Ghana, West Africa, partnering with local leaders to design and deliver HIV/AIDS curriculum for schools across the country.


Her writings on leadership, motherhood, identity, and place have appeared in numerous publications including O Magazine, Vogue, Wired, and Lithub. She serves on the national boards of Education Pioneers and RISE Colorado, and is a Pahara and AGLN Fellow. Proudly rooted in Brooklyn, NY and Surrey, BC, she lives in Oakland with her family.

Prior to her time with Pahara, Idrissa served as the founding director of Uncommon Schools’ nationally-recognized Summer Teaching Fellowship, growing the program over five years from 10 fellows in two school sites in Brooklyn to 125 fellows across Uncommon’s five regions. Prior to working in U.S. education she worked in schools across Ghana, West Africa in HIV/AIDS education as part of a locally-driven peer health education program. She is a Council of Urban Professionals fellow, a member of Education Leaders of Color, and serves on Google’s Edu Equity Board. As a facilitator and leadership coach, she partners with organizations and individuals in the United States and Canada who want to center equity, values-centered leadership, and whole human-focused design in their work.

As a writer, her work has been published widely, and she is co-editor of the bestselling anthology Black Girl Magic: Breakbeat Poets Volume 2 (Haymarket Books). She completed her undergraduate studies between Montreal’s Concordia University and the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, and her master’s in Educational Leadership, Politics, and Advocacy from NYU Steinhardt. A Brooklyn native, she grew up in Surrey, BC and lives in Oakland, CA – Ohlone land – with her husband and children.