Bushra Amiwala

Bushra Amiwala is an award-winning activist, media icon, dynamic speaker, and the first Gen Z elected official in the United States.

At just 19 years old, Bushra launched her historic campaign for the Cook County Board of Commissioners to amplify youth voice and serve underrepresented communities. She now holds an elected seat on the Skokie Board of Education as its youngest member, where she champions equitable governance, youth empowerment, and community resilience.

Bushra’s leadership bridges public service and corporate strategy: she earned her MBA from Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management and brings corporate insights from her background as a Solutions Consultant at Google, and now Pinterest. Her work has earned her national acclaim, including Glamour magazine’s College Woman of the Year, Seventeen’s Voice of the Year, CosmoGirl’s Change Maker of the Year, the United Nations Women’s Champion Award, the cover of TIME magazine, and a spot on the Forbes 30 Under 30 list.

Featured in the PBS documentary And She Could Be Next, Amazon’s RUN, and Hulu’s Our America: Women Forward, Bushra is a seasoned keynote speaker who has addressed live audiences ranging from 25 to 15,000 across tech, corporate, and social impact sectors. Grounded in empathy, humor, and actionable strategy, Bushra empowers women everywhere to claim their authority and embrace everyday leadership.

Categories: Current Events, News and Politics, Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, Generational Differences, Inspiration, New to AEISpeakers

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Topics

Making an Impact for All Audiences

Join Bushra as she shares her wealth of experience and fresh perspective to discuss a variety of impactful and timely topics. She works directly with organizations to tailor versions of her popular topics, listed here, or to create custom engagements based individual or organizational needs.

Diversity, Identity, and Inclusion

In this popular talk, Bushra shares her approach in unpacking the unconscious bias, microaggressions, tokenism, and how all of us can tackle these concepts in our daily lives. Coupled with a bit of humor, Bushra shares her personal experiences and brings it back with high level concepts and actionable lessons.

Empowering Youth Voices

When she chose to run for office at barely 19, empowering a youth voice was a foreign concept. Hear from Bushra about tangible ways one can become an “everyday leader” and influence their own networks. She shares lessons learned as a young person breaking into politics, rooted around mentorship, networking and not being afraid to ask for things.

Women in Politics

Running for office as a Muslim woman, Bushra found her messages – like those of many other women – to be lost and diminished to her clothing and apperance. She went above and beyond to ensure her platform was the core of her campaign, not her identity, and she shares how we can all continue to support women in politics in this regard.

Imposter Syndrome

Bushra ran for office, clearly seeing gap in her formal qualifications and age – and she did so in spite of her insecurities. Hear the deep impacts of insecurity and imposter syndrome – not just the ways it can show up in your life by how to identify it and overcome it.

We Are All Leaders

We all hold within us the capacity to become involved and lead – and we do not have the time to wait to be asked to do so. In this talk, Bushra addresses the stigma that leadership is something thought of as larger than ourselves, helping participants find their own voice.

Books

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