Founder and Executive Director of Community Organizing Alliance
Safiya is a former elected politician who created history when she was elected to the Lewiston City Council as the first Somali-American and youngest person in 2019. She is a graduate of Lewiston Public Schools and the University of Southern Maine, with a Psychology major and minor in Business Administration. Safiya served on many state, municipal and non-profit boards and committees. She is currently working on a Masters of Public Administration at Northeastern University. She is an avid advocate of social justice, community organizing, and youth leadership. She envisions a world that is just, fair and equitable. With COA, she intends to accomplish these goals by creating and supporting a community that is united and organized to support issues that are important to our daily lives.
Executive Director of Immigrant Resource Center Of Maine
Fatuma Hussein is the founder and Executive Director of Immigrant Resource Center of Maine, formerly known as the United Somali Women of Maine. She came to this country as a refugee teenager, attended school in the U.S, and began to work as a community advocate, using all the lessons she had learned in overcoming the challenges of being a refugee teenager in a different culture. Fatuma chairs New Mainers Community Collaborative and is a founding member of City SPIRIT. She holds governor appointed seats: Maine Commission on domestic & sexual abuse, and the Maine Permanent Commission on the status of Women. Based on her work, Fatuma received an Honorary Degree from Bowdoin College in 2017.
Founder of Community Staffing Partners
Born in Kenya, Mohamed Awil relocated to Lewiston and like many others who share a similar history of immigration, moving to Maine gave him the chance to start over. As a New Mainer who has grown up in two different parts of the world, Mohamed seeks to share his experiences with others while also learning from them. He believes in the power of diversity, but more importantly, in the power of inclusion, as this is the state of being valued, respected and supported. For the past five years Mohamed has worked in the healthcare field, holding roles in management and human resources while acting as a cultural broker. As a result of that, Community Staffing Partners was born to do that work at a larger scale where he serves as co-founder and operation manager. Away from work, Mohamed mentors and coaches young local athletes. "Go Devils!”
President, Community Concepts Finance Corp. President, Community Concepts, Inc. Housing Development
Libby grew up in a working-class family in Central Maine. He was fortunate to receive substantial needs- based scholarship to attend Bates College, where earned a degree in history and economics. He fell in love with Lewiston and made it his home after graduating. Public Service Libby served in the Maine Senate from 2014 to 2022 and was twice elected unanimously by his peers to serve as Senate Majority Leader. He served in leadership positions on the Government Oversight Committee, Taxation Committee, and State and Local Government Committee, and co-founded the Task Force on Maine’s 21st Century Economy and Workforce. Libby served five terms in Maine’s citizen legislature and two terms on the Lewiston City Council. Community Leadership In Lewiston, Libby served as chair of the universally accessible playground committee. Under his leadership, they established Maine’s first public universally accessible playground, where children and adults of all physical ability levels can play together. The playground, Jude’s Place at Marcotte Park, opened in 2018. He has served on the boards of Androscoggin Head Start, the Lewiston-Auburn Economic Growth Council, Tri-County Mental Health Services, and Western Maine Community Action, Inc. He is a past advisor to the Lewiston Youth Advisory Council and past member of Lewiston’s CDBG committee. Education, Profession, & Family Libby earned a bachelor’s degree in history and economics from Bates College in 2007. He earned his Master of Business Administration (MBA) at the University of Southern Maine’s School of Business in 2020 over a three-year period of night classes. Concurrent to his service in Maine’s part-time Legislature, Libby worked for ten years as a consultant to nonprofit and local government clients. Since 2020, Nate has worked on the leadership team at Community Concepts, Inc., overseeing the agency’s social impact lending, financial counseling, economic development, emergency shelters, and affordable housing programs. He lives in Lewiston and has two sons, Jude and Charlie.