Shalhoub teaches voice and music to young people and adults and enjoys speaking to various audiences in diverse spaces. She was recently a full-time Voice and Music teacher for middle schoolers at a public charter school in Richmond, California, and has taught adults at San Francisco State University, Sonoma State University, Five Keys Charter School. Shalhoub has given keynotes, speeches, workshops and musical presentations at UC Santa Cruz, UC Berkeley, The Presidio Officer's Club, Rutgers University, Community College San Francisco, performed at national conferences such as The Gathering of Leaders, Social Venture Network, The National Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation, The National Conference on Community and Restorative Justice, and others.

Watch her TedX talk HERE.

Naima Shalhoub is an experienced Restorative Justice practitioner, trainer and circle keeper/facilitator. After spending a year volunteering weekly inside San Francisco County women’s Jail facilitating music sessions in 2014, she came into the Restorative and Transformative Justice world. Holding a transformative, abolition lens to her work, Shalhoub served as an RJ Coordinator at Melrose Leadership Academy, a tk-8th grade dual immersion Spanish-English public school, for two years with OUSD. During that time she held hundreds of RJ practices including community building circles, repairing harm and conflict circles, welcome back circles, restorative conversations, music as community building, trainings and others. She also supported the school-wide implementation of RJ and started the school’s first Peer RJ student team. Shalhoub then transitioned to teaching music at a public charter middle school in Richmond for one year, applying her RJ practices inside the classroom and within the curriculum. In 2018 she joined the staff at Restorative Justice for Oakland Youth (RJOY) as a lead trainer, circle-keeper, and as the Women and Girls community organizer where she continued working regularly with community and schools including a weekly circle for girls inside Alameda juvenile hall, a weekly circle for Black Indigineous womxn of Color and femmes and a series of trainings for teachers in Thika, Kenya. In 2019 Naima began her independent RJ consultancy training and coaching non-profits, schools and community with an on-going partnership with John Muir Health's Beyond Violence Restorative Justice initiative, Borderlands. She is passionate about the intersections of art, music, community building and systems transformation and centers compassion, systemic change, social justice and radical joy in the work that she holds in community. Naima continues to be on staff part-time at RJOY, holds her own independent RJ consultancy with trainings and holding addressing harm and conflict circles with schools virtually.

Find out more about her current RJ work HERE

Through the lens of prison abolition, Shalhoub began facilitating weekly music sessions in 2014 with a group of women who named them the Music and Freedom Sessions, or Borderlands. The relationships cultivated through the music and conversations vastly shifted Naima's trajectory, leading to the recording of Live in San Francisco County Jail and the project Borderlands, which seeks to intervene on the isolation and confinement of the prison-industrial complex (PIC) by creating a space on the inside to collectively create and share music, and support the organizing work of advocates and organizers seeking to end mass incarceration and abolish the PIC. She was a regular visitor at San Quentin State Prison, and has taught classes and engaged in music fellowship inside San Francisco Juvenile Hall, Alameda Juvenile Hall, Avenal State Prison, Folsom State Prison, San Francisco County men's Jail, and others. Naima facilitated a weekly community building circle inside the girls-unit of Alameda Juvenile Hall for 2 years prior to the beginning of the pandemic in 2020 through her work with Restorative Justice for Oakland Youth (RJOY). 

Naima is a member of Golden Thread Productions, the first American theater company focused on the Middle East, landing acting roles in various staged readings and productions. She has also acted with the African-American Shakespeare Company, The Medea Project, participated in a musical theater residency at BRIC, and others.

Please contact Naima if you are interested in seeing her acting bio.