Marya Bangee

Marya Bangee is the Executive Director of Harness, an organization started by America Ferrera, Ryan Piers Williams, and Wilmer Valderrama to center the stories of underrepresented communities in popular culture. Marya works with culture-makers to promote more authentic narratives. Marya is also the CEO of SILA, a social impact consulting firm that advises on cultural representation in film and television; SILA’s cients include Netflix and Disney. She started as a community organizer in the Muslim community, where she represented her community in national media like the New York Times and NPR. Her career took her from organizing with low-income black and brown communities in Los Angeles to serving as a Project Director at UCLA, where she worked to increase access to higher education in Los Angeles. Marya was selected for the Coro Fellowship in Public Affairs, where she worked on a national Senate campaign, staffed California’s Speaker of the Assembly, and worked for the executive team at the California Community Foundation. Marya graduated as a Dean’s Merit Scholar from USC with a Masters in Public Administration in 2015. In 2017, she was selected by the Ford Foundation as a Public Voices Fellow, a program that aims to dramatically increase the impact of spokespeople from underrepresented communities.