Ali Abazeed (he/him)
40 Under 40 Class of 2025
Dearborn, MichiganDearborn: Founding Director of Public Health, Chief Public Health Officer; Wayne State: Public Health Faculty
City of Dearborn; Wayne State University
My ambition is simple: to keep building a local public health model that does not accept the status quo, but rewrites it.
Three words to describe me:
Imaginative. Literary. Relentless.
The best part of my job:
The best part of my job is building something that didn’t exist before — institutions, programs, even language — and watching it take root in people’s lives. It’s seeing ideas leave your head, leave the page, and become part of the air people breathe in this city.
Something that would surprise others about me:
Most people assume my world is policy briefs and council votes, but I spend just as much time reading and writing fiction. It’s not a hobby on the side, it’s truly how I test language, sharpen cadence, and make sense of the world. Public health and literature feel less like separate pursuits than parallel ways of trying to understand how and why people live.