The Office of Immigrant and Refugee Affairs is proud to welcome Khalid Mohamed, our newest Language Service Coordinator, a position that also happens to be OIRA’s newest role. As Language Service Coordinator, Khalid works with our Language Access Program and Policy Specialist Peggy Liao to administer our expanding citywide Language Access Program. This includes organizing the City’s Language Access Liaisons, supporting the integration of our translation management system Smartcat, and working with our community-based translators.

Khalid Mohamed was born in the port city of Aden in the Republic of Yemen and, as a junior high school student, arrived to the United States as a refugee to start his new life with his family in the city of Minneapolis, Minnesota. He’s a lifelong community advocate, passionate about linguistics and speaks three languages fluently: English, Somali, and Arabic.

Khalid graduated from Hamline University in Minnesota with a degree in political science and nonprofit management. And his career has been rooted in working with immigrant families to achieve language justice and equity both in education and in health. He has worked for several nonprofit organizations in Minnesota, as well as for the government of the City of Minneapolis. At the City, he served as a representative to the Minneapolis Youth Congress and later as a member of the Minneapolis Youth Violence Prevention Executive Committee. He has also worked as a legislative assistant intern for the Office of Minnesota State Representative Ilhan Omar, now a U.S. Congresswoman. Khalid Mohamed moved to Seattle in 2019 and prior to his role at OIRA, he worked for Summit Public Schools: Atlas as an operational assistant.

These days, Khalid and his wife call West Seattle home. Khalid enjoys spending time with his family and in the outdoors (though not always at the same time)! And he looks forward to visiting his home state of Minnesota, not only to see his relatives and friends but also to attend the world-famous Minnesota State Fair.