The University of Minnesota’s Office of Public Engagement has awarded Ish Malik Holt-Shabazz, Director of Neighborhood Leadership and Organizing at the Center for Urban and Regional Affairs (CURA), the Exemplary Community-Engaged Professional Award. The honor recognizes his leadership in strengthening community organizing and developing community leaders through CURA’s Neighborhoods Now! Program to strengthen neighborhoods and advance community-driven solutions.
Since launching in 2014, Neighborhoods Now! has graduated approximately 500 community leaders representing more than 200 organizations. Participants come from nonprofit organizations, neighborhood groups, public agencies, and the University of Minnesota, creating a diverse network of leaders working to address challenges such as housing instability, economic inequality, food access, and equitable development. Though the majority of participants come from the Twin Cities metro, the program has also had participation from Greater MN, North and South Dakota, California, and even Liberia.
For Holt-Shabazz, the work is rooted in a simple idea: the people closest to community challenges are also closest to the solutions. Before launching the program, he interviewed more than 60 community leaders to better understand the support organizers needed. Those conversations helped shape the program’s curriculum and established the collaborative approach that continues to guide Neighborhoods Now today.
Through intensive training sessions, mentorship, and peer learning, the program helps participants build practical organizing skills while strengthening cross-cultural collaboration and leadership reflective of the community.The organizing strategies and leadership skills developed through Neighborhoods Now! have translated into significant community wins.
Program alumni have played key roles in efforts that include:
- Securing $11 million in public funding to prevent displacement along the Blue Line Light Rail Extension
- Passing Right to Organize legislation protecting tenant organizing across Minnesota
- Winning a rent stabilization ballot initiative in St. Paul
- Establishing a Just Cause Eviction ordinance in Brooklyn Center
- Creating a new equitable engagement funding formula in Minneapolis to better support historically underrepresented neighborhoods
These victories are helping preserve affordable housing, strengthen tenant rights, and ensure communities have a stronger voice in decisions affecting their neighborhoods.
Beyond policy outcomes, many participants say the program has been personally transformative. Alumni have gone on to become nonprofit executive directors, serve on boards, and run for public office. Others continue their work as grassroots organizers and neighborhood leaders. Participants often describe the program as a rare space where community knowledge, lived experience, and organizing expertise are recognized as essential forms of leadership.
As Neighborhoods Now! celebrates its tenth anniversary, Holt-Shabazz continues to expand the program’s reach and impact. Through his leadership, CURA has helped build a growing network of community organizers and leadersworking together to strengthen neighborhoods and communities across Minnesota. The Exemplary Community-Engaged Professional Award recognizes not only Holt-Shabazz’s leadership, but also the power of community-driven solutions to shape more just and equitable systems.
Learn more about Holt-Shabazz's work in this short video.
Ishmail Malik Holt-Shabazz
Prior to joining the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities’ Center for Urban and Regional Affairs and its Neighborhood Leadership and Organizing Program as its now Co-Director, Ishmail Malik started as a Union Organizer for the AFL-CIO Wisconsin Statewide and with Minneapolis Bicycle Coalition to promote access, equity, and community benefits of bicycle infrastructure, policy, and engagement.
He also served as the Executive Director and Economic Development Organizer of North Minneapolis’s Harrison Neighborhood Association for 11 years and three years as the City of Saint Paul’s Director of District 6 Planning Council leading in both organizations community engagement projects, racial equitable development initiatives, business development, community benefits agreements, equitable development scorecard strategies, and land use planning. He also served as statewide supervisor for AmeriCorps in the early 2000s.
Also, as of June 10th, 2022, Malik is a registered civil mediator through the Conflict Resolution Center of Minnesota. He received an undergraduate degree in Liberal Arts in Human Services with a minor in Sociology from the University of Minnesota Morris. Malik currently sits on the Board of Directors for Twin Cities’ Men’s Center and the Alliance for Metropolitan Stability. He is a former long-standing member on multiple grant review committees; multiple Minneapolis neighborhood association and Saint Paul district council volunteer boards as an officer plus in committee positions; is a 2004 graduate of Neighborhood Leadership and Organizing's Neighborhood Organizing Training Program, and is a past member of the Neighborhood Leadership and Organizing Advisory Committee. He is also a former Emergency Services Director for American Red Cross, Northwest Illinois-Rockford chapter.
Malik is a native of Chicago but has lived in Minnesota for over 28 years. His life has centered on family, spirituality, music, dance, and his love for learning, community capacity building, systems change, reparative racial justice, equitable economic development with local community benefits, and direct service. I'm honored.
