Tarek Ali

Tarek Ali is an award-winning storyteller, writer, creator, and actor well-known for his powerful voice that sparks thought-provoking conversations and encourages self-acceptance, growth, and healing. Having experienced homelessness, poverty, sexual assault, and bullying for his race, obesity, and queerness growing up, Ali turned to YouTube to share his journey at the young age of 15 in 2014. Now, after 10 years of creating powerful content with over 200 million views across all platforms, Ali is respected as one of the pioneers of social media who helped normalize conversations about growth and mental health online before it became popular.

Even before becoming a YouTube star, Ali was doing impactful work offline, having started an LGBTQ non-profit at the age of 16, which eventually grew to have over a dozen chapters across the country. This achievement caught the Obama administration's attention, who invited Ali to the White House to contribute his insight into national LGBTQ policy. In addition to his activism, Ali obtained a Bachelor of Science degree in Biology from Georgia State University in 2020, interned at Howard University and Columbia University Dental Clinics, and did research on cancer cell regeneration at the National Institutes of Health for three years. Though Ali did not continue in health care, he considers himself a scientist in pursuit of everyone’s well-being and healing. After ten years of healing millions of people on social media, Ali is now using his talent in screenwriting and acting to deliver these same powerful messages on the big screen.

Ali is on his way to being one of Hollywood’s newest hot creators. He has written several TV shows, all of which he plans to produce and star. But his writing doesn’t stop there, as he plans to release several books in the upcoming years.

Ali’s podcast, "THAT Conversation with Tarek Ali," is one of the best-performing Health & Fitness podcasts of his demographic, and he plans to take it to the next level by touring around the world to deliver his messages in talks and conversations with other thought provokers and public figures.