Kashif Shaikh

Co-Founder & President of Pillars Fund

Kashif Shaikh is the co-founder and president of Pillars Fund. In 2010, Kashif and a small group of Muslim philanthropists founded Pillars to strategically organize wealth within their communities and support American Muslim civic institutions and leaders building a more just, equitable society. For the next five years, Kashif volunteered his time and resources to grow and lead Pillars. In 2016, he was asked to be Pillars’ first full-time executive director and transitioned Pillars from a volunteer-run fund to a fully operational foundation. Under his leadership, Pillars has invested more than $15 million to support Muslim civic and creative leaders. Today, Pillars is a leading cultural institution in the United States that focuses on building narrative power — intentionally shifting the stories, perceptions and ideas that shape the public imagination — to drive transformational policy and social change that advance equity and justice for Muslims and all people.

At the heart of Kashif’s career in philanthropy is a dedication to promoting racial equity and creating opportunities for Muslims and communities of color to tell their stories. Prior to launching Pillars, Kashif was a program officer at the Robert R. McCormick Foundation, where he helped manage a portfolio that distributed more than $20 million annually and helped scale a variety of Chicago nonprofits working at the intersection of racial justice, poverty, and education. He also managed the Foundation’s corporate partnerships and helped develop corporate social responsibility strategies for the Chicago Tribune, Chicago Blackhawks, and Chicago Bulls, among others. His career began at the United Way of Metropolitan Chicago, where he helped develop strategies to engage the organization’s largest corporate partners. 

Kashif’s expert insights and writings have been featured in The New York Times, Buzzfeed, Variety, NPR, Vice, and Vogue among others. He currently serves on the board of directors of the Peabody Awards (East Coast division), Chicago Humanities Festival, the Bloc, and Donors of Color Network. He has been named a Philanthropy Forward Fellow by the Aspen Institute Forum for Community Solutions and Neighborhood Funders Group, a New Profit Civic Lab Entrepreneur, and an Ambassadors for Health Equity Fellow. In 2017, Crain’s Chicago Business named him to their 40 Under 40 list.