About

Amina is an award winning filmmaker, photographer, magazine editor, writer and interviewer.

Her work is inspired by the belief that stories told through words, visual elements, and conversations with all types of people and in the absence of preconceived judgment, have the power to break down barriers and stereotypes leading to new paths of connection and positive interaction.

As a true visualizer, she has spent more than a decade interviewing notable thought leaders, and finding under representative communities and people and help tell their stories. Her passion for storytelling comes to life most in her films that showcase positive, impactful stories about minority American groups often misunderstood in the mainstream press. Her film Tariq's Cube, won the audience award at GlobeDocs 2018 and was broadcast on PBS World Channel in the fall of 2019. Her feature film #LiveLikeHaris was featured at 18 film festivals and won awards including Best Documentary, Best Inspirational Film and Best Directing. Other works of hers were featured at The Boston Globe and she is currently in works of several other documentary films.

Amina founded an award winning, hybrid digital and print current affairs platform with a large global audience that ran for almost ten years. Through her work interviewing a diverse group of people, Amina produced a broad portfolio of human-interest stories and conversations with both influential and controversial leaders and everyday people of all backgrounds. She interviewed Samuel Huntington, the Harvard professor who popularized the term ‘clash of civilizations.’ It was his last interview before passing and the only interview he gave speaking directly to a Muslim audience. Other notable interviews include Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Princeton scholar and political influencer Bernard Lewis, Madeleine Albright, Cornel West, Noam Chomsky, Glenn Greenwald, Thomas Friedman and others. These interviews have been read by hundreds of thousands globally. In addition, the magazine has reported on several exclusive stories and a number of articles published first at TIM been cited and quoted in mainstream media networks.

She is frequently invited by communities, organizations and other groups to speak at events around the country on the media, perceptions of minority groups and cross-cultural understanding. Her talk titled The Power of Images incorporates her work and knowledge in the field of visual storytelling and conversations and the impact that stories and human-to-human interaction can have on a global scale. Her motivational talk titled Rinse, Cycle, Repeat speaks of the ways in which minority voices can positively break out of the negative stereotypical and sensationalized media reports often found in mainstream media.

She has been recognized by The Aspen Institute as an Ideas Scholar, and was a fellow at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History. She holds Masters degrees from Harvard University and Columbia University and holds a PhD from Boston University studying American Religions.