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Khadijah Z. Ali-Coleman, Ed.D. is a cultural curator, community organizer, nationally recognized speaker, and writer. A playwright, she has had more than a dozen of her plays presented publicly in venues throughout the country, including the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing ArtsTheater Alliance, and Baltimore Theater Project. She was a Theater Alliance Quadrant Playwright from 2019-2021, a 2019 Fulbright-Hays scholar, a 2015 Maryland State Arts Council Independent Artist awardee and a 2012 Prince George’s County Social Innovation Fund Forty Under 40 awardee.

She is author of the children’s book Mariah’s Maracas and co-editor of the book Homeschooling Black Children in the US: Theory, Practice and Popular Culture. Her work is featured in the anthology The Fire Inside: Collected Stories and Poems from Zora’s Den (ZD, 2020) and the book Afro-Futurism in Black Panther: Gender, Identity and the Remaking of Blackness (Rowan & Littlefield, 2021). She is founder of the multidisciplinary arts company Liberated Muse Arts Group and co-founder of the education research group Black Family Homeschool Educators and Scholars (BFHES).

Dr. Ali-Coleman holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Interdisciplinary Studies (African American Studies and Mass Media) and a minor in Writing from the University of Maryland Baltimore, County; a Master of Arts degree in Mass Communication from Towson University and a doctorate in education from Morgan State University. 


Photo by Ben Dawson, Jr.

Photo by Bayou Elom

"We cannot create what we can't imagine"
                          -Lucille Clifton

Award-Winning College Professor
From 2011 until the COVID-19 global quarantine in 2020, Dr. Ali-Coleman served as teaching faculty, teaching Communication Studies and Fine and Performing Arts courses at area community colleges and universities, including Northern Virginia Community College, Prince George's Community College, Community College of Baltimore County, Morgan State University and Montgomery College. She won numerous grant awards for her work as an instructor, including a 2015 Prince George's Community College Foundation Impact Grant which allowed her to implement the Mid-Atlantic Communication and Media Arts conference. This led to her later creating the brand StudentMediaOnline.com. In 2022, she served as teaching faculty at the University of Maryland in the English department's Professional Writing Program.

Teaching Artist, Curator & Scholar
Dr. Ali-Coleman served from 2019-2020 Scholar-in-Residence at Prince George’s County African American Museum and Cultural Center (PGAAMCC) where she also served as a teaching artist. She curated and presented her family history and that of four other families through the exhibit Flying Towards Freedom during her time at PGAAMCC.

As a teaching artist, she worked with students at Annapolis Road Academy Alternative High School. Annapolis Road Academy is one of two alternative academy programs in Prince George's County, MD with a primary focus on students in grades 9 through 10 who are experiencing behavioral and attendance concerns in the regular classroom setting. Dr. Ali-Coleman used a multi-disciplinary approach with the students, teaching the history of the Piscataway native people of Maryland and the Guinea people of Africa and their early existence in Maryland during colonial times. Using the drum as a centerpiece for learning and arts creation, she led the children in activities centered on identity, culture and communication, executed through designing drums and crafting spoken word pieces. She also facilitated a tribal drum workshop for families in the museum during the Kwanzaa season.

Non-Profit Administrator
As an educator, she has created and led educational programs for over 20 years at numerous organizations. She currently serves as the Executive Director of The Hurston Wright Foundation. She previously served as the Director of Education and Community Engagement for Montgomery Community Media (MCM). At MCM, within 15 months, she coordinated the development of the organization's virtual media training curriculum, broadened grant-funded programs and led efforts to create and sustain community educational partnerships. Highlights include the development of the MCM Youth Media Academy and a media mentorship program serving seniors 55 years-old and older. At Hurston/Wright, she created the Black Writer's Studio podcast and developed the virtual writing courses and professional development program that launches in fall 2022, featuring more than a half dozen writing courses and professional development talks for busy adults aspiring to become professional writers.
 
Reiki Practitioner and Creativity Coach
In 2018, while preparing for the final leg of her doctoral studies before engaging in her dissertation study, Dr. Ali-Coleman sought ways to manage her stress and anxiety. She began to study intuitive healing modalities such as Reiki and became certified in Usui Holy Fire Reiki, later becoming a Master teacher of the practice. She includes this practice  within her creativity coaching practice to offer clients a holistic experience that respects the mind, body and spiritual connection of each individual. She is also a certified crystal healer and  intuitive counselor who has worked off and on as a creativity coach for various clients in creative fields such as writing and performance arts.  She has helped dozens of writers complete their writing projects through services ranging from outline assistance, editing, character/story development, and publishing support to workshops and webinars on self-publishing and distribution. From 2012 to 2022, she helmed the brand the Creative Midwife, offering a bevy of creative and healing services and supports. 


Writer, Performer, Community Organizer
Khadijah Z. Ali-Coleman has written over three dozen stageplays and produced, workshopped,  and/or directed several of them on various stages since 2008. Learn more here. As founding director of Liberated Muse Arts Group, she has organized almost 100 events featuring more than 500 performing, literary and visual artists. Some of the events she organized include multi-year events like The Capital Hip Hop Soul Festival, specialty cultural events like Kwanzaa in August, fundraisers like To Haiti, With Love, performance series' like #theSPILL, and Creative Creatives Creating (C3), and a variety of virtual and in-person events that educate, inform and mobilize around issues. Learn more here.

In 2016, she released her first collection of music, Song of a Space Cadet as singer Khadijah Moon. Learn more here.

Homeschooling  Research & Community Work

Dr. Ali-Coleman homeschooled her own daughter off and on for 13 years in addition to being a researcher on homeschooling in the Black community. Her doctoral dissertation research was published in 2020 and is titled, Dual Enrolled African American Homeschooled Students' Perceptions of Preparedness for Community College. She crafted a short film about her homeschooling experience and her research that was featured in the 5th annual Black Sustainability Summit. Click the button below to watch.

Learn more HERE about her education group Black Family Homeschool Educators and Scholars, LLC and the companion resource group for parents.