Name Wajahat Ali
Age / How old / Birthday / Date of Birth / DOB Born in August 1979. As of 2025, he is around 46 years old.
Wedding & Marriage / Wife / Partner Married. Check the full bio for relationship details.
Wikipedia Biography / Profile Background
Introduction :
- Wajahat Ali is an American attorney & consultant, who has worked for the U.S State Department. He is also a journalist and a writer.
- Ali speaks mostly about the complex Muslim American experience and how the new generation is striving for a change.
Personal Life, Parents and Family Details :
- Wajahat grew up in Fremont, California, in a big family of Pakistani origin.
- His parents brought him up in a traditional but open-minded fashion : His dad was clean-shaven and his mom did not wear a hijab. The family, however, did follow certain Islamic doctrines like fasting during Ramadan and praying five times a day. He also attended Quran lessons.
- Ali is now married to Dr. Sarah Kureshi, a family medicine physician at Georgetown University. The couple has three children – Son Ibrahim (born circa 2015), daughter Nusayba (born circa 2016), and daughter Khadija (born circa 2020).
- Unfortunately, Nusayba had stage four Hepatoblastoma (liver cancer) in April 2019. After a successful liver transplant from an anonymous living donor, she is cancer-free.
- The family currently lives in Virginia.
Education : Qualifications, High School & College Info
- Wajahat went to high school at Bellarmine College Preparatory, graduating in 1998.
- Post that, he began studying at the University of California, Berkeley. Ali earned a Bachelor’s degree in English in 2002, but two years later he enrolled in school again. This time he attended the University of California, Davis (UC Davis) where he studied law. He graduated from there in 2007.
Career, Job, Salary and Net Worth :
- From 2007 – 2010, Wajahat worked for Altmuslim as an Associate Editor where he used to provide a global perspective on Muslim culture, life, and politics.
- While still working at Altmuslim, he was also working at Ali Consulting as a consultant until August 2010.
- In the middle of working for Altmuslim, he also founded the Law Offices of Wajahat Ali where he worked as an attorney. He continued to work in this business in conjunction with his other jobs.
- From February 2011 to January 2012, Wajahat worked at the Center for American Progress as a writer and researcher.
- In March 2012, he started off as a consultant at the U.S Department of State. Here, he helped strategize and implement a leadership training program aimed to empower global change agents and young social entrepreneurs. For this role, he held multi-day training programs in Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Maldives & many other countries in conjunction with American consular staff.
- In mid-2013, he quit doing lawyer work and switched over to working on Al Jazeera’s show The Stream. There he performed the duties of a digital producer and co-host.
- In 2015, he took on the role of a political reporter and national correspondent at Al Jazeera America in Washington D.C.
- One year later, Ali moved to Virginia and began working as a Creative Director for Affinis Labs. He worked with Facebook, United Nations, and Google to help them shape their projects so that they included the global community.
- Starting in 2016, he began contributing to different news stations and newspapers. He worked for the Huffington Post, New York Times, and CNN.
- From 2017 to 2021, Wajahat was a contributing opinion writer for The New York Times. Since 2021, he has been a columnist for The Daily Beast and also serves as a Senior Fellow at the Western States Center and Auburn Seminary.
- In addition to all these jobs, Ali found time to write the play The Domestic Crusaders in 2005 and was both the curator and adviser for The M Word series. The Domestic Crusaders was one of the first major Muslim American plays to gain national attention.
- In January 2022, Ali’s first book Go Back to Where You Came From: And Other Helpful Recommendations on How to Become American was published by W.W. Norton & Company.
Trivia and Achievements :
- Wajahat has won an award for the film about the Muslim American experience, “The Domestic Crusader,” which was aired in 2005.
- He is also an Emmy-nominated as producer for his series The Secret Life of Muslims in 2017. The series was also a Peabody finalist.
- He is the founder of the Blog Goatmilk: An Intellectual Playground, where he was the blogger and editor. It was ranked as one of the top political blogs.
- He was also a Peabody nominated producer for his series The Secret Life of Muslims.
- Wajahat’s grandfather was born in India but later moved to Karachi, Pakistan, with his wife and young children, in 1952. In 1965, his father immigrated to the United States as a college student. By 1973, Wajahat’s grandparents landed in Chicago to care for his dad, who was sick with Hodgkin’s disease. Thus, the Ali family made America their new home.
- After the COVID-19 crisis stuck in early 2020, he changed his Twitter handle to Wajahat “Wears a Mask Because of a Pandemic” Ali.