Girmay Zahilay, social justice advocate, King County councilmember, and son of Ethiopian refugees, will give the keynote address at the UW School of Social Work’s 2022 graduation celebration to be held Thursday, June 9 at 7 p.m. at the Alaska Airlines Arena at Hec Edmundson Pavilion.
In 2019, Zahilay was elected to represent District 2 on the King County Council, becoming its youngest member and the only sitting Black county council member in Washington state. Since his election, he has been a champion for social and racial justice, and works tirelessly to ensure adequate community support for those disproportionately affected by the pandemic and recession. One of his major achievements was to spearhead a new vision for public safety by proposing a charter amendment that allows King County to invest in public health and community-based alternatives to traditional policing.
Born in Sudan to Ethiopian refugees, Zahilay and his family moved to the United States when he was three. When he was eight, the family lived in a homeless shelter for a time. “I’ll never forget the feelings of not having a place to call our own,” he said, “constantly having strangers in our personal space, and not having control over the most basic things like the types of food we were allowed to bring to our room.”
Zahilay graduated from Franklin High School and went on to Stanford University. After he graduated in 2009, he participated in a yearlong fellowship program that trains leaders to fight poverty and hunger, and then he moved to Washington, D.C., where he advocated on behalf of low-income citizens.
This early exposure to policy work led him to enroll at the University of Pennsylvania Law School. While there, he interned at the White House and saw how administration officials during the Obama era combined law, policy and grassroots efforts to drive sustainable change.
In 2014, he moved to New York to practice law, but found it was too far removed from the communities he wanted to serve. With that insight, he co-founded a group called Rising Leaders that gives underserved students access to mentors and life-skills training. He moved back to Seattle where he launched a second chapter of Rising Leaders.
The School’s graduation celebration on June 9 will be the first in-person since 2019. The format includes welcoming remarks, awards recognition, Zahilay’s keynote address, student performances and the conferring of degrees.