Diallo Shabazz is a global education advisor, sustainability expert, and civil rights advocate. Over the past decade he has traveled to four continents working to advance civil rights and equality, sustainable development, education, and green jobs. An avid speaker and moderator, Diallo has hosted forums and made guest appearances on numerous media outlets including the World Bank, South by Southwest (SXSW), UN Web TV, New York Public Radio, 2018 Women 2.0 Conference, and ABC’s 20/20.
Diallo is Managing Director of Braven Solutions, a business strategy firm advising large institutions on the intersection of corporate social responsibility, technology, and education. Working to improve workforce strategies and career & technical education locally and internationally, Diallo has advised Ministries of Education and schools from Kenya, Canada, China, Denmark, Israel, Australia, Russia, and Kazakhstan. He was a principal architect of strategies to transform the future of education in New York by co-drafting Initiative 3 of the OneNYC Report to expand career & technical education, increase access to computer science education, and provide bilingual education for all students.
He previously served as Senior Director of Sustainability Education and Partnerships at the NYC Department of Education where he managed one of the largest career and technical education portfolios in the U.S., comprised of 318 programs, across 135 schools. He served as advisor to the founding committees that launched the innovative PTECH High School with IBM, and the STEAM Center at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Diallo also served as an advisor to “Design League Badge Portfolios,” a three-year NSF-funded research and development project on STEM and digital badges. At the DOE, he also served as Executive Secretary for the DOE’s Industry Advisory Council which developed public-private partnerships with 200+ corporations to provide internships and improve career readiness for 120,000 students.
Diallo is a 2017 fellow at the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations, and visits China bi-annually to participate in the young leader’s forum. From 2011-2013, Diallo was appointed as a North American Civil Society Representative for the United Nations Environment Program, to support ministerial-level meetings on the U.N.’s Post-2015 Agenda and creation of the Sustainable Development Goals. As a civil society representative, Diallo was as a delegate at the Regional Meeting of the UN Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) in Switzerland, the Governing Council Global Forum in Kenya, and the UN Sustainable Development Conference (Rio+20) in Brazil.
Diallo previously served as a delegate of the NYC Workforce Development Board, and an advisory committee member of the CUNY School of Labor and Urban Studies which formally opened in 2019. In 2015, he was a member of the New York State Board of Regents Blue Ribbon Committee that created the first state-wide My Brother’s Keeper Initiative, where he helped secure $20M in funding to improve education for boys and young men of color. Diallo also previously served as Director of Green Development for Solar One where he co-managed a program that trained over 1,500 people in renewable energy, energy efficiency, and green construction.
Starting his career as a Regional Director of the NAACP’s Youth & College Division for the northeast U.S., Diallo worked on issues including civil rights, education policy, voter empowerment, criminal justice, and community development. He specialized in diversity in higher education and youth development.
Diallo is co-founder and board member of Birthright AFRICA, a non-profit organization committed to providing a free educational trip to Africa for every Black student in the United States to discover their legacy of innovation. He is originally from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and lives in Harlem and Los Angeles.