Raised right here in Gwinnett County, Nabilah Islam is a lifelong fighter, organizer, and community advocate dedicated to advancing Democratic causes and values.
Before starting her own small business, Nabilah grew up in Norcross and Lawrenceville, and graduated from Gwinnett County Public Schools. Nabilah put herself through college at Georgia State University by working at a luggage store in Peachtree Corners.
As the daughter of working-class immigrants from Bangladesh, Nabilah watched her parents work long hours to put food on the table. When she was in high school, her mother was injured at the warehouse she worked at as an order puller. Nabilah saw firsthand the devastating effects our broken healthcare system can have on families. Since that moment, Nabilah has been a staunch advocate fighting for quality healthcare access and Medicaid expansion.
Nabilah has dedicated her life and career to advancing progressive ideals in Georgia. In 2020, Nabilah served as a Senior Advisor to the Gwinnett Democratic Party where she helped lead outreach to Vietnamese, Korean, and Latino communities – leading to the strongest Democratic performance in the county in decades and helping to elect President Joe Biden. During the critical Senate runoffs, Nabilah led an organization called Save Our Senate, which knocked on over 34,000 doors, turning out Black and Brown voters across Gwinnett for Senators Ossoff and Warnock. Nabilah was also appointed to become the President of IPAC an organization dedicated to getting out the Muslim American vote, she led a historic effort of reaching out to over 60,000 registered Muslims voters across the state during the critical runoffs.
Earlier, Nabilah rechartered the Gwinnett County Young Democrats to help build the next generation of progressive leadership in Georgia, and in 2016 she was awarded the Future is Blue Award by the Atlanta Young Democrats. In 2014, Nabilah was proud to work for Jason Carter, the first gubernatorial candidate in the South to run on expanding Medicaid. Nabilah is also an alumna of the Gwinnett Neighborhood Leadership Institute.
At the national level, Nabilah worked on Hillary Clinton’s 2016 Presidential Campaign and later at the Democratic National Committee. At the DNC, she helped raise millions of dollars that were sent back down to states across the South, flipping dozens of seats up and down the ballot in 2018.
Following the murder of George Floyd and amidst calls for racial justice across the nation, Nabilah partnered with now-Gwinnett County Commissioner Kirkland Carden to demand the removal of the county’s last remaining Confederate monument, which had been placed just steps away from the site of the lynching of Charles Hale. Thanks to her continued activism, the racist monument was taken down.
Nabilah is currently Commissioner Carden’s appointee to the Gwinnett Outreach Advisory Board. In that position, she has worked to provide assistance and support for AAPI small business owners in Gwinnett following the targeted Asian spa shootings.