Aisha Bain
Aisha Bain is storyteller, strategist, and facilitator engaging the collective power of women, girls, and marginalized communities to amplify their experiences, solutions, wisdoms of their past, and their visions for the future.
Working with organizations, communities, companies, foundations, governments, and institutions, Aisha’s work ignites the common fire in all of us to transform ourselves and the world around us.
Founder of Common Fire Consulting, Aisha is an inspiring leader with over 20 years of experience in senior leadership in over 20 countries.
Her speciality is crafting programs and facilitating processes with those who have been deliberately silenced or unheard to unleash their voices, visions, and creative fires to forge new pathways for change.
“Humans are made of stories. Everything we do is rooted in story, from how we understand our histories, to who controls our histories, to who we vote for, to what we eat. Storytelling is one of the greatest tools for social change. How we weld it matters.”
Work Featured In
Common Fire Consulting Services
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Facilitation
Uniquely crafted to your goals and needs, Aisha’s adapted process design, highly creative participatory methods, and on the spot modifications ensure your specific needs are met - from generating ideas, managing difficult conversations, breaking deadlocks, and evaluating solutions, to creating spaces of healing and hope. From intimate groups to large conferences, a human-centered approach brings a broad range of creative approaches and modalities for all types of learners and personalities ensures every individual is seen and heard in their own unique way - and let’s not forget the joy.
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Consulting
An array of unique, highly tailored, and specialized services support addressing your pain points, challenges, and needs through over 20 years of Aisha’s senior leadership, crisis management, and movement building experience. Aisha offers thought partnership, future visioning, unique ideation, strategy, and creative problem-solving to overcome your obstacles, ignite imagination, move people to action, and forge equitable, just futures.
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Speaking
Captivating storytelling, powerful messages, high energy, ability to read and adapt to a room, and outstanding level of audience engagement, coupled with 20 years of public speaking and global expertise, allows Aisha to deliver powerful, provoking, and moving keynotes, interviews, panels and moderation, and motivational speaking.
As a filmmaker, artist, and author, Aisha has a particular passion for using creative tools and media to further social justice movements, and to raise the voice and visibility of women and girls within those movements.
Through her work, Aisha facilitates the visionary development and internal healing of organizations and individuals, and uses her insurgent imagination to collaboratively design programs, creatively problem solve, and move people to action.
Co-Founder of
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Resistance Communications
Aisha is the Co-Founder and Chief Architect of Resistance Communications, a creative action agency that works with local power to elevate the voices and visibility of women, girls, youth and resistors fighting for social justice through storytelling, transformative programming, and art grounded in strategy for social change.
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Vision Not Victim
Aisha is the Co-Founder of Vision Not Victim, a global girl-driven program that provides creative platforms to unshackle the power of adolescent girls, address the violence they face, and support girls, parents, and communities to create safer and more supportive environments for girls.
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WeCiE
Aisha also the Co-Founder of WeCiE (“we-see”), an international network of women of color to increase their visibility in gender-based violence (GBV) during emergencies such as natural disasters or war. This forum provides a space for specialists to connect to women of color around the globe, share experiences and solutions, exchange resources, and to collaborate on opportunities.
"Aisha Bain embodies all that we want and need in this moment. An electrifying and charismatic speaker and educator, Aisha is a galvanizing force for our best possibilities. Aisha will not only help you envision more inclusive, equitable and abundant futures, she’ll help you ignite and develop your abilities to bring them to life.”
–Lisa Kay Solomon
Author, Associate Professor, Designer in Residence,
Stanford University Hasso Plattner Institute for Design
Testimonials
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Having Aisha facilitate the GBVIMS Steering Committee Annual Retreat was a real value add. Her ability to use creative and participatory techniques to ensure our full engagement throughout the 3 days enabled us to jointly identify strategic priorities, challenges and bottlenecks to the way we work and chart attainable bite-sized targets to allow us all to reach our desired outcomes.
Elfriede Kormawa
GBVIMS+ Deployment Specialist | Child Protection in Humanitarian Action, Programme Division (UNICEF) -
Aisha expertly facilitated the annual retreat for our inter-agency (United Nations and INGOs) group. Aisha excels not only at keeping the meeting moving towards the goal but also at bringing fun and skillfully managing emotions into the space. Her approach is especially suited to the aid and development sectors where a cause is driving the work. She creates a safe space for participants and reads the room well,
Kristy Crabtree
Senior Advisor, Digital Innovation (IRC: International Rescue Committee) -
It is an honor to have learned from such a transformative leader. I was simply blown away by her ability to build a community amidst anguish, doubt, and uncertainty. Aisha was literally the mother, the sister, the friend, cheerleader and guide in the room, always responsive to people’s needs, always guiding our paths, ensuring that no one is left behind - providing calmness and thoughtfulness but with poise and leadership.
Farida Nabourema
Director of Membership and Constituency Engagement (AWID)
Clients & Partners
Book a Consultation
Reach out if you’d like a consultation for your project, want to book a speaking engagement, or want to explore how our partnership can ignite new possibilities.