Program Director for U.S. Democracy, William and Flora Hewlett Foundation
Ali Noorani is the incoming director of the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation’s U.S. Democracy program and former president and CEO of the National Immigration Forum, a non-partisan advocacy organization working with faith, law enforcement and business leaders to promote the value of immigrants and immigration. Growing up in California as the son of Pakistani immigrants, Noorani quickly learned how to forge alliances among people of wide-ranging backgrounds, a skill that has served him extraordinarily well as one of the nation’s most innovative coalition builders.
Before joining the Forum in 2008, Noorani was executive director of the Massachusetts Immigrant and Refugee Advocacy Coalition, and he has served in leadership roles within public health and environmental organizations.
Ali is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, holds a master’s in public health from Boston University and is a graduate of the University of California, Berkeley. Noorani lives in Washington, D.C. and is the author of two books, Crossing Borders and There Goes the Neighborhood.