Serena Rasoul

Serena Rasoul founded MA Casting, a casting agency that casts, consults, and advocates for MENA and Muslim talent in the TV/Film, Commercial, and Art industries. Her organization spearheaded the first study and test on the portrayal of Muslim women on-screen called, Surviving to Thriving: Muslim Women’s On-Screen Test with the Geena Davis Institute for Gender in Media and the Pillars Fund.

She was recently named Top 100 POCs in Media for 2023 by A.N. Publishing.  She serves as Community Engagement Specialist at the National Smithsonian Museum of Asian Art, where she works to engage artists and community groups with the museum.  And also sits on the Board of the non-profit organization called M Film Lab, which works to develop scripts from underrepresented communities into short films.

And finally, as an artist herself, Serena recently preformed at the Kennedy Center, completed a Fellowship at Harvard, and in the Fall will begin her PhD in Ethnomusicology at Columbia University, focusing on the documentation and preservation of Palestinian Folkloric Music.