Daaiyah Bilal-Threats is a labor, social justice, and public education advocate currently serving as the Senior Director, Education Policy & Implementation Center (EPIC) 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 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 Education Policy and Implementation Center (EPIC), which works to provide evidence-based policy ideas and thought leadership to a wide range of education issues. Her center encompasses NEA’s research department, health and safety program, disability rights and inclusion program, office of international affairs, and policy development division focusing on domestic and global education policy.
In previous NEA roles, she led NEA’s philanthropic giving and strategic alliance operations, 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 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, the Learning First Alliance, New Media Ventures, Partnership for the Future of Learning, and the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy.
