Mission Aligned

Unzila Chowdhury is a nonprofit professional and development strategist with 8+ years of experience across the sector. Her nonprofit journey began with AmeriCorps in California, earning $12,000 a year because apparently the first lesson in nonprofit management is learning to survive without money. She holds an MA in Nonprofit Management, a BA in Economics, a BA in Environmental Studies, and a minor in Women, Gender & Sexuality Studies. She’s also a CORO NYC Workforce Leadership Fellow. During graduate school, she realized not a single one of her professors was a person of color. Race, gender, economics, and power were often taught as separate topics rather than interconnected systems shaping nonprofit work. That stuck with her, and it became part of the reason Mission Aligned exists. Nonprofit leaders shouldn’t have to take on student loan debt to access the knowledge and resources they need to support their communities. Who decides what counts as quality education? Whose expertise is valued? And why is access to that knowledge still so unequal? Mission Aligned makes nonprofit knowledge more accessible, practical, and relevant to the people doing the work. It offers free resources for nonprofit and social impact leaders, with coaching and grant writing support for those who want to go deeper. Outside of work, Unzila is usually swimming in the ocean, being a beach bum, hanging out with cats, or wondering why nonprofit workers are expected to solve the world’s problems on a shoestring budget. She believes screaming into the void can solve at least 32% of your problems, most meetings should have been emails, and people who say they don’t like cats are deeply suspicious. The cat opinion is non-negotiable.