Hebah Farrag
Biography
Hebah Farrag was the Assistant Director of Research at the USC Center for Religion and Civic Culture through 2023. She managed large grant-based research projects while pursuing her own research on race, religion and social change. Projects she managed under her tenure (2006-2023) included the Spiritual Exemplars Project, the Religious Competition and Creative Innovation project, and the Pentecostal and Charismatic Research Project, among others. Farrag also served as one of the center’s primary evaluators in many measurement, learning and evaluation projects.
Farrag currently serves as the Grants and Impact Assessment Manager at Legal Aid at Work (LAAW), where she advances the organization’s efforts to ensure fair treatment in the workplace by supporting low-wage workers in asserting their workplace rights without fear. Farrag ensures LAAW is able to advocate for employment laws and systems that empower low-paid workers and systematically-excluded communities, regardless of immigration status, race, religion, gender identity, sexual orientation or disability. Farrag is the former Associate Director of Grants at PATH (People Assisting the Homeless), where she managed the organization’s multi-million dollar government grants portfolio, focused on advancing long-term solutions to homelessness across the state.
Farrag has been quoted by a variety of publications, including the Los Angeles Times and Sojourners Magazine. She has written for publications such as The Conversation, The Berkley Forum, Religion Dispatches, On Being with Krista Tippett, and Forced Migration Online. Hebah is a former member of the USC Presidential Muslim Advisory Council, the Aspen Institute’s Racial Justice and Religion Commission within the Inclusive America project, and is the former Assistant Director of the Center for Muslim-Jewish Engagement, an institutional partnership between the CRCC, the Omar Ibn Al Khattab Foundation and Hebrew Union College.
She is a graduate from the American University in Cairo (AUC) receiving a Masters in Middle East Studies. She also holds a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science and International Relations from the University of Southern California and a Graduate Diploma in Forced Migration and Refugee Studies from the AUC.
Areas of Expertise:
- Spiritual Exemplars and Positive Social Change
- The Role of Faith and Spirituality in Social Change Movements
- Housing-First Homeless Services
- Labor Rights and Organizing
- Racial Economic Justice
- Islam in the US: Institutions, Identity and Shifting Practice
- Middle East/North Africa Politics and Religion
- Non-Profit Impact Assessment and Grant Management