About
Strategy,
story,
care.
I’m Aya Nimer — a strategic leader and writer whose work lives at the intersection of cultural strategy, Arab identity, and the institutions that shape what stories get told.
By day I build programs that center Muslim and Arab creatives at a national scale. In the margins — and increasingly not just the margins — I write essays about art, bodies, and the knowledge we carry without knowing it.
Photo by Maaria Lohiya
I came up through the art world — as Assistant to the Chief Curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, coordinating exhibitions and translating curatorial vision into institutional strategy. That experience gave me a particular sensitivity to how meaning gets made, and unmade, inside institutions.
At Pillars Fund, I’ve spent the last five years building one of the most visible fellowship programs in the Muslim creative community — co-designing the Pillars Artist Fellowship in partnership with Riz Ahmed’s Left Handed Films, Netflix, and Amazon MGM Studios.
My writing extends the same questions I ask in my program work: Who gets to define a community’s story? What does it mean to stage a neighborhood’s memory — or to look at an abstraction and recognize your own history in it?
I’m a collaborator at heart. I do my best work in environments where warmth and rigor aren’t considered opposites. If you’re building something and need someone who will show up, ask the right questions, and follow through — I’d love to talk.
Get in touch
Let’s make
something
worth reading.
Whether you’re looking for a critic, a collaborator, or a strategic partner who gets things done — reach out.
Get in touch →