Conversations With A Wounded Healer

Even if you aren’t a fan of Hollywood films from the 1980s through the early 2000s, chances are you can name the ethnicity of the “baddie” in 99.9% of them. Sure, my math might be a bit fuzzy––H’wood has a legacy of demonizing all brown-skinned folks––but an overwhelming number of screen villains during this period were either vaguely or expressly rendered as Muslim.  Decades of prejudicial portrayals are no match for Arij Mikati, the managing director of Culture Change at Pillars Fund. She designs and leads programming that challenges damaging narratives about Muslims in the U.S. and amplifies Muslim voices in artistic spaces.  What struck me most about this episode is the joy that Arij and Anne infused into a conversation that could’ve (rightly) focused only on pain and anger. Arij chooses to focus on hope, but her shift in mindset took time to nurture. GUEST BIO Arij Mikati is the Managing Director of Culture Change at Pillars Fund, where she designs and leads programming that challenges damaging narrative