NEW Executive Director, Asad Ali Jafri!

Please join us in welcoming our new Executive Director, Asad Ali Jafri!

The official announcement of Asad’s new position at SAI will be at South Asia Institute’s Inaugural Gala, March 14, 2020.

Executive Director of South Asia Institute, Asad Ali Jafri

Asad Ali Jafri is a cultural producer, community organizer and interdisciplinary artist. Using a grassroots approach and global perspective, Asad connects artists and communities across imagined boundaries to create meaningful engagements and experiences. Asad has two decades of experience in the arts in multiple capacities including touring as an artist, developing arts education curricula, producing festivals, organizing creative communities and strategic planning for arts organizations. He is a graduate of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. 

Since 2018, Asad has been based at Shangri La Museum of Islamic Art, Culture & Design (part of the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation) in Honolulu as Curator of Programs where he built a community-centered residency program for artists, thought leaders and creatives. As President of Sukoon Creative from 2013 - 2018, he produced cultural exchanges and programs in the UK, Malaysia, Lebanon, South Africa and multi-year street art project in Pakistan. Prior to that, Asad was the Director of Arts & Culture at IMAN in Chicago where he directed the Takin’ It to the Streets Festival and Community Cafe series. Over the years, Asad has worked across five continents in many countries including Morocco, Algeria, Kazakhstan, Brazil, UAE, Italy and Belgium. 

Additionally, Asad continues to work with several arts organizations in various roles. He directed Arts Midwest’s CaravanSerai project which toured international artists across the US and continues to advise the New England Foundation for the Arts’ Center Stage program. Asad produced Old Town School of Folk Music’s Iron Heart Chicago - a series of concerts from master folk artists in Chicago’s ‘L’ train stations. His work for the Greenbelt Festival in the UK won the Act of Independence Award in 2017. Most recently, he worked with Words Beats & Life to produce “Footsteps in the Dark” - a hip hop-based stage production at the Kennedy Center in Washington DC. Asad currently serves as a Fellow of Pillars foundation’s Muslim Narrative Change cohort.