Na’ilah Amaru
IGEPS Affiliate Practitioner
Na’ilah Amaru is a nationally recognized political strategist and the founder and CEO of Civic Alchemy LLC, a social impact consulting firm that partners with nonprofits, advocacy organizations, and campaigns to build coalitions and mobilize grassroots power. Over more than two decades, starting as a U.S. Army ammunition specialist on a combat tour in Iraq, she has turned grassroots organizing into governing power, moving from city halls and statehouses to Capitol Hill, including as a legislative aide to the late Congressman John Lewis.
Na’ilah has led multi-issue campaigns and coalitions that produced major legislative and funding wins, including billions in public investment and statewide policy change. She has directed strategy and operations for New York City’s largest caucus, the City Council’s Black, Latino, and Asian Caucus, and has worked inside government, nonprofit, and civic institutions at every level: local, state, and federal. That range gives her a full-board view of how policy actually gets made, not just a view from one seat at the table. That track record has earned her national recognition: she has been named a Top Lobbyist by the National Institute for Lobbying Ethics and received the Top 20 Advocates Award from The Advocacy Association and Roll Call.
She has put that view to work building lasting political infrastructure: as a co-founding member of New York’s BIPOC Democracy Table, she has helped center racial equity in democracy reform and strengthen collective political power across communities of color, and as a strategy contributor to the PowHER Coalition, she has helped advance its pay equity and salary transparency campaigns for women across New York’s public and private sectors. She is completing a Ph.D. in political science at the CUNY Graduate Center, building on master’s degrees in public administration, public policy, and urban affairs. That degree is not a step away from practice but an extension of it: two decades in the field give her research its stakes.
A regular commentator and speaker, Na’ilah offers sharp, accessible analysis on campaigns, political strategy, and the intersections of race, gender, and power in American politics. That work has appeared on NY1, PBS, ABC, NBC, CBS, and Bloomberg, and in the Washington Post, Politico, Forbes, and Teen Vogue.