Co-Founder and PresidentPillars Fund
Kashif Shaikh is the Co-Founder and President of Pillars Fund. Under his leadership, Pillars has invested more than $7 million in grants to create opportunities for Muslims in the United States to tell their own stories, build community, and fight injustice through the media, arts, public discourse, and civil society. Prior to launching Pillars, Kashif was a program officer at the Robert R. McCormick Foundation, where he helped manage a portfolio that distributed more than $20 million annually and helped scale a variety of Chicago nonprofits working at the intersection of racial justice, poverty, and education. Kashif’s expert insight and writing has been featured in The New York Times, Buzzfeed, Variety, NPR, and Vice, among others. He currently serves on the board of the Peabody Awards (East Coast division), Color Congress, Donors of Color Network, and Mortar, a Cincinnati nonprofit that helps entrepreneurs from historically marginalized communities.