Ibtihaj Muhammad

Moderator: Dr. Shadee Malaklou, Asst. Professor & Chair, Women’s and Gender Studies

Join us for a conversation with 2016 Olympic bronze medalist Ibtihaj Muhammad, the first American woman to compete in hijab. As a sports ambassador for the U.S. Department of State’s Empowering Women and Girls through Sport Initiative and named one of TIME magazine’s 100 Most Influential People, Ibtihaj is a self-described “change agent” and—as Mattel describes her— “shero” to young girls everywhere. In conversation with Berea College’s own Dr. M. Shadee Malaklou, Assistant Professor and Chair of Women’s and Gender Studies, Ibtihaj will speak with us about what it means to pursue what she describes in her memoir as “an unlikely American dream,” about how she navigates professional sports as a celebrity Black Muslim woman, about her feminist entrepreneurship as the founder of the modest clothing company Louella, and about her first children’s book, the New York Times Best Seller The Proudest Blue: A Story of Hijab and Family. In it, Ibtihaj insists—as Berea College does—that our differences are worth celebrating, writing, “My hijab is part of me.”