Farah Assiraj is a national leader in race, equity, literacy and immigrant education. She has supported districts and national organizations in strategic planning; curriculum and instruction; Multi-Tiered Systems of Support (MTSS); equitable literacy; multilingual and multicultural education; special education; restorative justice; behavioral and social-emotional supports; student services and student success teams; data inquiry cycles; and targeted professional learning on a variety of educational, family and community topics. Farah has served in several leadership roles, most recently as the Chief of Teaching and Learning for the Council of the Great City Schools, serving 78 of nation's largest urban districts with +7.8 million students; as the Deputy Chief Academic Officer for the Boston Public Schools, serving +50K students; as the Assistant Superintendent of Multilingual and Multicultural Office for the Boston Public Schools, serving +30K students; as the Upper School Leader of the Boston Renaissance School, serving +900 students; as the Director of Organizing with the Boston Teachers Union; and in other various leadership roles in the Boston Public Schools. Farah is a proud former teacher in Special Education, Reading, English Language Arts, English as a Second Language, Students with Interrupted Education and Newcomers, spanning K-12 grades. 
 
Farah’s personal schooling experience and professional trajectory have culminated in a deep understanding of systemic inequities and necessary conditions required for all students to thrive, especially those with other languages as assets, who have varying abilities that must be attended to and/or have been historically marginalized. Farah is the founder of Peregrinum nonprofit community organization, cairEDucation consulting company, Schooling Justice Initiative and co-founder of many other coalitions focused on education, family and community, equity and belonging.

As a recipient of the Fulbright Distinguished Award in Teaching, Farah's research on mother tongue languages' usage underscores the effectiveness of code-switching and its positive correlation with language and literacy in bilingual classrooms. Farah holds a B.A. in Sociology with Summa Cum Laude from the University of North Florida, a M.A.T. in ESL from Simmons University, and is a doctoral candidate at Harvard University.