Our Team

Fahd Ahmed
Executive Director

Mohiba Ahmed
Pakistani Community Organizer

Nesar Bhuyan
Organizing Fellow

Ana Liza Caballes
Deputy Director

Rakshya Ghimere
Operations Coordinator

Kazi Fouzia Kabir
Director of Organizing

Sherry Padilla
South Queens Community Organizer

Nabila Chowdhury
Gender Justice Organizer

Rowshon Sarker (Nipa)
Bronx Community Organizer

Akash Singh
Communications Coordinator

Jagpreet Singh
Political Director

Rishi Singh
Development & Resource Manager

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Aadit Siwakoti
Nepali Community Organizer

Syed Mir Matin Tami
Youth Organizer

Simran Thind
Punjabi Community Organizer

Fahd Ahmed
Executive Director

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Nesar Bhuyan
Organizing Fellow

Nesar was born in the Narayanganj district of Bangladesh next to Dhaka. He draws much inspiration in his life from his mother, who, throughout her life, has shown great care and duty to other people. Following in her example, Nesar has always looked for ways to support others. Before coming to the US and becoming an organizer, Nesar worked as a primary school teacher. As a teacher, he was able to build lifelong connections with students and support their development. Nesar joined DRUM as an active member in 2017 and gained valuable experiences in the fights for Excluded Workers Fund, the Green Light Bill, and to keep Amazon out of Queens. He was also actively engaged in DRUM’s Gender Justice work. Nesar sees the connections between working class people here in the US and in Bangladesh. Working class people everywhere devote all their labor to basic survival of themselves and their families. Nesar organizes at DRUM because he believes that it is important to be engaged in the fight for gender justice and human rights.

Ana Liza Caballes
Deputy Director
Kazi Fouzia
Director of Organizing

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Sherry Padilla
South Queens Community Organizer

Sherry is a working class Indo-Guyanese woman. She migrated to the US at the age of 8, spent her childhood growing up in the Bronx and has lived in South Queens for the past 20 years.  She grew up in a mixed status immigrant and working class household. Sherry joined DRUM in 2017 when her brother was detained. She helped to organize her community for her brother’s release and was a leader in DRUM for years. As a Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) recipient, Sherry has strong roots fighting for  in the Indo-Caribbean community and changing the oppressive conditions that limit immigrant working class people. She hopes to stand together with working class and undocumented people, to organize with them so that they know they have rights and no longer have to live in fear. 

Rowshon Sarker (Nipa)
Bronx Community Organizer

Nipa is a fighter and revolutionary who has committed her life to struggle alongside her community. Before coming to organizing, Nipa was a filmmaker and theatre worker. Coming from a society in Bangladesh where working class women were restricted in the types of professions they could choose, Nipa faced the familial and social challenges of an oppressive and patriarchal society. While confronting these challenges, she struggled to forge her own path and be true to herself and her commitments. In 2004, she won an international Emmy for her journalistic work with unprivileged, working class children and traveled abroad for the first time. When Nipa came to the US,  she became a DRUM member. At first she was excited and nervous about engaging in mass organizing work, but has since gained a deep love and commitment for this work. In recent years, she has been committed to the development and sustainability of working class women’s leadership. She dreams of a movement full of leaders struggling together towards revolutionary change.

Akash Singh
Communications Coordinator

Akash was born in South Queens and raised by resourceful working class Guyanese women. They joined DRUM as a member in high school and came on staff to support with communications work in 2021. Politicized by coming to understand that the daily struggles of the people around them were caused by systems of racial capitalism and cishet patriarchy, Akash comes into our movements as someone who is inspired by the radical histories of their peoples’ survival and resistance to colonial and imperialist powers in the Caribbean and beyond. They are working towards infusing their peoples’ wisdom and our rich arts and cultural practices into our movements for collective liberation. Akash spends their free time watering plants, watching tiktoks, and playing video games.

Jagpreet Singh
Political Director

As a life-long tenant and the son of immigrants, Jagpreet works with others to empower them to fight back similar obstacles shared in his family history including tenant harassment, unwarranted evictions, deportation, and the lack of in-language services that would otherwise prevent South Asians from falling through the cracks. A native of  New York City and New Jersey, he attended LaGuardia Community College and Rutgers University where studied Political Science, History, and South Asian Studies. Jagpreet has worked as a Lead Organizer for Chhaya CDC, Campaign Manager and other positions for a number of electoral and issue based campaigns, and is involved in local Queens-based political organizations and associations. He is fluent in Punjabi and understands Hindi and Urdu.

Rishi Singh
Development & Resource Management
Nepali Community Organizer

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Syed Mir Matin Tami
Youth Organizer

Tami is an immigrant from Bangladesh. He grew up in a diverse community surrounded by people speaking numerous languages with different cultural values. Tami hopes to create a base of militant youth leaders in the working class South Asian/Indo Caribbean communities to make qualitative changes in the conditions of their people. Monster energy drinks and momos are the two things that he hopes will see him through the end of every single day  and the years to come as an organizer.

Simran Thind
Punjabi Community Organizer

Simran is greatly influenced by her upbringing in the Central Valley of California, where racial capitalism triangulates to produce the hazy valley (fires), carceral valley (site of mass incarceration), and the sunken valley (fracking and big agriculture). Growing up around criminalized, exploited, and neglected communities, she became politicized and began organizing around the intersections of criminal legal systems and immigration. Simran believes that organizing towards the end of the carceral and capitalist state is the pathway to liberation for all people. Outside of organizing, Simran loves practicing roller skating and imagining alternative ways of being, resisting, and revolting against oppression.