Gernaro Waheed is the Executive Director of the Muslim Anti-Racism Collaborative (MuslimARC) and a community organizer, educator, and faith leader rooted in the Inland Empire of Southern California. Raised in rural Alabama and shaped by the streets of SoCal, he carries a lived understanding of what African American families and communities are up against and what it takes to build something lasting from the inside out.
Gernaro reverted to Islam in 1998 and has been an active leader in the Southern California Muslim community ever since. He co-founded the Sahaba Initiative, where he designed, implemented, and managed direct service programs that became a cornerstone of Muslim-led community care in the region. Through the Sahaba Initiative, he launched one of the first Muslim-led food pantries in the Inland Empire in downtown San Bernardino in 2012. The pantry served 50 to 100 community members per week in its first year and grew steadily over more than a decade — providing fresh produce, halal and vegan options, and ready-to-eat bags for unhoused individuals who could not cook, with direct outreach to homeless encampments. Over thirteen years, the program has served tens of thousands of community members. He also developed Zakat-based resource distribution, connecting Islamic principles of giving directly to neighborhood needs.
His programmatic work spans more than a decade of direct service across multiple areas. He led a community addiction recovery program from 2010 to 2018, running weekly sessions using the Millati Islami curriculum and serving cohorts of 10 to 25 participants, graduating hundreds of community members over the life of the program. He designed and implemented a Rites of Passage program through the Boys Institute from 2014 to 2015, and developed a small business development program that put $50,000 in grant funding directly into the hands of five community entrepreneurs in 2017. He has led certified training in anger management, parenting, and cultural relevance. He holds a food handling management certificate and has worked as a caterer — a practical expression of his commitment to showing up for his community in concrete ways.
Gernaro's civic leadership spans interfaith, government, and movement spaces. He serves as Board President of Inland Congregations United for Change (ICUC), an interfaith power-building organization mobilizing people of faith across the Inland Empire, and as President of the Riverside Interfaith Council. He has sat with city, state, and congressional and senatorial elected officials to advocate for the needs of historically marginalized and unhoused communities, and served on the San Bernardino County Committee on Homelessness. He has partnered with PICO California, LIVE Free, COPE, Faith in Action, the Interfaith Movement for Human Integrity, the Coalition for Immigrant Justice, the movement against the Adelanto Detention Center, and the Humanitarian Day coalition. He founded Black August commemorations in San Bernardino and Riverside.
Gernaro is a speaker and a connector. He has delivered talks, presentations, and khutbahs at mosques and community institutions across Southern California on topics including Islam and social justice, mass incarceration and justice-impacted individuals, immigrant rights and transracial solidarity, African American history and culture, wholistic responses to hunger and homelessness, economic self-empowerment, Pan-Africanism, and reparations. His family support work has inspired initiatives at the national level. He founded Family Day in Lancaster, California, uniting Muslim communities from Lancaster, Palmdale, Victorville, and across the High Desert. He organized fishing trips, hiking excursions, and camping experiences for youth, highlighting that healing and belonging happen outside of institutional walls. Healing and connection comes with holistic connection with self, community, and nature. He is also the founder of Waheed LLC and co-owner of NearEast Juice Bar, a health and wellness business.
His contributions to community organizing and service have been recognized with the Sahaba Initiative Hero's Award (2016), MuslimARC's Racial Justice Creator Award (2019), a commendation from the Riverside Suicide Prevention Coalition, and certificates from the California State Senate and State Assembly.
As Executive Director of MuslimARC, Gernaro brings his organizing roots, his holistic direct service experience, his policy engagement, and his gift for building relationships across difference to the work of advancing anti-racism education and multiracial Muslim solidarity nationally. A husband, father, and friend to many, he leads the way he has always lived: by showing up, connecting people, and building community wherever he goes.
