Marya Bangee is a Community Organizer with One LA, an affiliate of the Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF). Marya graduated from UC Irvine in 2009 with dual bachelor’s degrees in English and Sociology. During her undergraduate studies, she was actively involved with community organizing both on- and off-campus. Through her organizing, she often represented the Muslim-American voice in national media like the LA Times, PBS and NPR.

For a year after graduation, Marya served as the Programming Director at a community radio station. She then moved to Los Angeles where she worked at UCLA as the Project Director for MAPS, an organization that mentors inner-city students.

Marya has helped lead several national campaigns advocating for freedom of speech and the protection of civil liberties. Most recently, she led the advocacy campaign around the highly-publicized trial of the “Irvine 11,” eleven Muslim students who were criminally prosecuted for speaking out peacefully during a speech on campus. The advocacy campaign brought together a diverse coalition that leveraged pressure on the local judicial system through picketing, letter-writing campaigns, townhall meetings, new media, packed court room sessions, and press conferences.