Maryam Laiyemo is from Northern Virginia by way of Nigeria. She is currently a senior at Howard University, where she is majoring in Administration of Justice and minoring in Sociology. At Howard, she has been on the Executive Board of the Howard University Muslim Students Association for 3 years, including two terms as President. She has passion for community issues including human rights, healthcare disparities, and social justice. She hopes that her unique perspective as an immigrant, African American Muslim woman, will aid her in improving all the communities she identifies with in all ways possible. She is currently a Peer Educator at Reaching All HIV+ Muslims in America (RAHMA), where she has conducted workshops, outreach, and other services for at risk populations in the DC Area. She hopes to pursue a career in health care and believes that the intersection between community health and human rights is vital. Her passion for social issues made her choose to intern at KARAMAH because she wholeheartedly supports KARAMAH’s mission and values, and wanted to further her research and legal exposure.
Hiba Akhtar is completing a Masters degree in Women’s and Gender Studies at Rutgers University. She is especially interested in understanding ideas of women’s rights within the context of the Qur’an and sunnah. Hiba has experience working on women’s activism at UN Women, with the Government of Pakistan, and within her local Muslim community.
A writer and storyteller at heart, Hiba’s first introduction with women’s issues was an oral histories project in which she interviewed women survivors of Partition, the era of India’s independence from the British empire and of Pakistan’s subsequent creation. Hiba is interested in helping women and marginalized countries tell their own stories, and wants to spend her life helping uplift those voices. At KARAMAH, Hiba is eager to learn more about the intersection of scholarship and legal justice work which make up KARAMAH’s core work. She finds inspiration in this work, and is excited to put her media and communications skills to work in the KARAMAH offices.
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