Jamira Burley is an award-winning activist and international speaker. Currently, she is the Worldwide Education Strategic Initiatives Lead at Apple & co-founder of IAMHERETO, working at the intersection of community, impact investments, and philanthropy. Prior to Apple, Jamira was the Director of Social Impact North America for adidas.

Over the last 17 years, her work has taken her across the United States and 40+ countries working with collective impact teams representing business, government, and youth leaders to make an equitable change by evaluating and reforming traditional institutions of power to enable safer and empowered communities.

Jamira was recognized as an Obama White House Champion of Change, 2020 Oprah Magazine Visionary, and a Forbes Under 30 Honoree in Law and Policy. She has worked with Target, Deloitte, Sephora, Obama Foundation, American Express, Ponds, United Nations and T-Mobile. Previously, she was featured on MSNBC, CNN, Forbes, C-SPAN, BBC, and Al Jazeera.

Jamira’s Story

As a native of West Philadelphia, Jamira saw first-hand the disenfranchisement of marginalized communities. In 2015, sparked by the murder of her brother Andre, Jamira discovered her calling at the age of 15 years old. She organized an anti-violence program in her high school, which reduced the rate of violence by 30%. Gaining public recognition through her efforts, she received a $50,000 grant from the Governor to implement the program in the ten most persistently-dangerous high schools in the city. 

She is the first of her 15 siblings to graduate high school and pursue higher education, obtaining a BA in International Business and Legal Studies from Temple University. For the past decade, Jamira has worked with corporations, non-profits, and government leaders on better engaging impacted communities. In her work, she helps to ensure a collaborative relationship between youth, bilateral agencies, governments, and business leaders; to enable innovative ways to educate, engage, and activate young people around the world. In 2018, she was the first United States citizen awarded the Global Leadership Award for Vital Voices and selected as an MIT Media Lab Fellow. 

Previously, Jamira worked as the Head of Youth and Skills for the Global Business Coalition for Education, National Deputy Millennial Vote Director at Hillary For America, and before that, she managed the gun violence and criminal justice portfolios at Amnesty International USA. Jamira seeks to provide unique insight from “lived experiences” that will help actualize the change we all so desperately need. Lastly, Jamira consults with a number of public/private entities on how to authentically engage impacted communities and guest host on SiriusXM, where she and leading youth/young adult experts reexamine this country’s history and the reemerging of past conflicts (current events), to generate a fresh perspective and create REAL change through solution-driven dialogue.

Panels & Keynote Speeches