Jamila Headley

Co-Executive Director

Jamila is an impact-focused leader and an accomplished advocate for healthcare, racial, and disability justice. She thrives at the intersections of strategy and implementation, building organizations and movements at the global and local levels, and caring for the individuals in them.

Jamila comes to Be A Hero, having spent the past 18 years advancing racial, economic, and health justice across the United States, the Caribbean, Eastern and Southern Africa, Eastern Europe, Central Asia, and South-East Asia. She also brings to Be A Hero her significant expertise in strategic advocacy and movement building, health policy analysis and research, private philanthropy, and building progressive organizational and movement infrastructure.

Prior to Be A Hero, Jamila served as the Chief of Staff for the Center for Popular Democracy (CPD) and CPD Action—a national network organization dedicated to advancing racial justice, economic justice, and a pro-immigrant, pro-worker agenda in partnership with high-impact-base building organizations in 35 states, Washington D.C. and Puerto Rico. At CPD/A, Jamila led the organization’s external communications and oversaw the team working on equity and racial justice. Before CPD/A, Jamila served as co-leader and Managing Director of the Health Global Access Project—a global health justice movement-building organization. There she worked with social justice leaders, activists, and organizations in more than 15 countries to advance access to HIV/AIDS treatment and quality healthcare more broadly. Jamila also worked at Open Society Foundations as a program officer on global health financing and accountability and transparency in the health sector.

A Rhodes scholar, Jamila has a BA in Political Science, a Masters in Global Health, and a Ph.D. in Public Health from the University of Oxford. A former academic, Jamila has published research in health policy and financing, health systems reform, and the role of social movements in policy change.

Jamila is a Caribbean immigrant from Barbados, where she grew up. She is living with the neurological disorder, Transverse Myelitis.