DORA MUHAMMAD

Dora Muhammad began writing letters of the alphabet before she walked or talked as a toddler. She is a multidisciplinary artist, transcendent author and unflinching advocate for women's, children's and human rights. Her childhood experiences growing up in an interfaith immigrant family informs her devotion to build unity throughout the African and Indian diasporas across faiths and ethnicities. With extensive work in government relations, public policy formation, and interfaith theological frameworks, she is a transformative thought leader, innovative public policy sculptor, vanguard interfaith relationship builder, and natural community mediator and shaman.  

Among Dora's career distinctions, she is the cherished first female, solo, and youngest editor of The Final Call Newspaper; the first associate director of faith at Planned Parenthood leading the mobilization of a national interfaith table on reproductive health care; founder of Virginia's PUSH maternal health coalition where she developed legislation and led advocacy efforts to establish the FAMIS MOMS program to provide prenatal care for undocumented women; developer and coordinator of the JAB Initiative, a multimillion three-year CDC-funded program to amplify the ethics of justice, autonomy and beneficence in health care delivery to the Black community; and most recently, public theologian who designed the Theologies of CARE initiative to equip higher theological education institutions to commit to comprehensive reproductive health equity in their curriculum and student life programs.

She earned a B.A. in Journalism and Documentary Photography, with a concentration in Magazine Production and completed her photography thesis at Dartington School of the Arts in Devon, England. She worked as an arts administrator for Autograph-ABP (Association of Black Photographers) while studying International Law and Human Rights at the University of London. Dora earned her Master in Public Administration, and a Certificate in Ministry and Theology from Princeton Theological Seminary. Her doctorate to be conferred in Public Administration and Policy in December 2025 will capstone her research to curate a shared lexicon of concepts and principles across 10 faith traditions that can be operationalized in outreach strategies to faith communities by local government to sustain engagement, relationships, and public policy formation and evalution. 

She is the founder of The AWARE Project (Advocacy for Women's Activism, Rights & Empowerment) and principal at the Creative Grace, LLC firm. She serves in a voluntary capacity on the Program Board of the Institute of Caribbean Studies as its Ambassador to Women, and Theologian in Residence at Faith in Public Life. A daughter of Indo-Caribbean immigrant parents, Dora is a native New Yorker who resides in Northern Virginia.