NCRP Vice-Chair
National Education Association & NEA Foundation
Daaiyah Bilal-Threats is a labor, social justice and public education advocate who currently serves as the Senior Director for Education Policy at the National Education Association (NEA), America’s largest labor union.
For over 20 years Daaiyah has played a critical role in helping build and secure policy advances and programs that make our schools stronger and our political system more democratic. She has advised movement leaders, run winning political campaigns, championed the cause of quality public education internationally and has helped lead some of the progressive movement’s most important organizations.
As policy lead for the nation’s most powerful union, she currently oversees NEA’s research; health and safety program; international affairs; and its policy development and advocacy arms with a focus on domestic and international education policy. In previous NEA roles she led NEA’s philanthropic giving and strategic alliance programs: bringing in external funding to enhance signature NEA programs and facilitating NEA’s strategic engagement with more than 100 key national and international partners. In 2020 she built NEA’s largest-ever independent political campaign, highlighting educators as trusted members of every community. This campaign helped create the conditions necessary to elect a new U.S. president as well as numerous federal and state candidates that supported worker rights, racial and social justice, unions, and public education.
She has worked in large-scale social change her entire career beginning with the World Wildlife Fund, American Red Cross, and the Health Information Network.
She has served in leadership positions with numerous progressive political and civic organizations. She currently serves in leadership roles with the American Prospect Magazine, Partnership for the Future of Learning, and the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy.