Deena Chalabi is a strategist, curator and writer whose work explores how individual expression and critical thought can impact and expand public imagination. She was most recently Senior Director of Growth and Partnerships at The OpEd Project, a global thought leadership initiative for elevating underrepresented voices working towards a more intelligent and inclusive world.
Deena is also Brand Advisor at Armory Square Ventures and teaches global contemporary art in the Curatorial Practice graduate program at the California College of the Arts.
She was the founding Head of Strategy at Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art in Doha, Qatar (2009-2012), and the inaugural Barbara and Stephan Vermut Associate Curator of Public Dialogue at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (2014-2019). She was a Visiting Scholar at the Arts Research Center at UC Berkeley (2019-2020).
She has organized events about art, literature, culture and politics in several countries including the US, UK and Japan and has spoken widely on related subjects, including at Stanford University, Oakland Museum of California, Kenyon College, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the New Museum.
Her writing has appeared in publications including Bidoun, The New Inquiry, the Journal of Visual Culture and SFMOMA’s Open Space, where she was a columnist-in-residence in 2019.
Deena holds a Masters from UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism and a BA cum laude in Social Studies from Harvard College, where she focused on postcolonial history, theory and literature. She grew up in London, UK and now lives in Oakland, California. She is working on her first book(s).