Jamila Raqib is Executive Director of the Albert Einstein Institution and a specialist in the study and practice of strategic nonviolent action. For 15 years, she worked closely with the late Dr. Gene Sharp, the world’s foremost scholar of the field of strategic nonviolent action. Since 2002, she has been focusing on the development and distribution of educational resources on nonviolent action and has conducted workshops on strategic planning for movements, human rights organizations, universities, and governmental bodies around the world. As a Director’s Fellow at the MIT Media Lab, she conducted research on how to design better systems for nonviolent action research and education.

Alia Braley is the Director of Research & Education at AEI, having previously worked directly under Gene Sharp and contributed to the institution’s core programs. Alia is a Ph.D. candidate in Political Science at UC Berkeley, and has held research appointments at Stanford, Johns Hopkins, MIT, the United States Institute of Peace, and the World Bank, combining large-scale data analysis with qualitative insights into political behavior and social movements. Alia has extensive experience supporting nonviolent movements and training practitioners in civil resistance and democratic defense.