Barni Axmed Qaasim

Barni is a general partner at Devlabs Ventures, a venture capital firm managing funds in North and South America and the Caribbean. She is investing capital to support innovation, economic development, and self-determination in outlier communities. Barni was a member and later the Director of Production for Third World Majority, a women of color media collective based in Oakland, California from 2004 until they closed in 2009. Barni created media for immigrant rights campaigns at Puente Arizona and Mijente from 2010 – 2015. Barni taught video skills to the youth at SNAG Magazine a Native American youth arts magazine from 2008 until 2012. She is currently a board member of the Somali Association of Arizona and has been a member, contributing graphic design, photography and video skills, since 2006.

Third World Majority

Barni is collaborating with Tamara Perkins, Sara MacPherson, and Beto Lopez on a new feature length documentary, The Gathering, about a substance abuse support group in San Francisco’s Bay View Hunter’s Point neighborhood. Barni directed Catching Babies, a feature length documentary awarded “Excellence in Documenting Women’s Health,” from Puente a la Salud in 2013, and screened at the Midwives Alliance of North America Conference, Black Midwives Conference, University of Illinois at Chicago’s African American Cultural Center, the Chagrin Falls Documentary Film Festival and the White Sands International Film Festival. Barni is Associate Producer for Under Arpaio, a documentary film and winner of the “2012 Best of Arizona” at the Arizona International Film Festival; the film was selected for the Sundance Institute’s Creative Change Artists’ Retreat. From 2010 – 2011 Barni’s documentary short, Youth on the Dividing Line, was featured in the ASU Human Rights Film Festival, the Applied Research Center’s Raceflicks Film Festival, aired on KPFA Radio’s FlashPoints, and featured on the ColorLines Blog. Barni was an Assistant Editor for the documentary, Into the Current, which was selected for the Lucerne International Film Festival and One World International Human Rights Film Festival. Barni directed A Little Rebirth which won an award for “Giving Somali Refugees A Voice,” by the Somali Association of Arizona and is regularly aired on PHXTV and Know99 television stations in the Phoenix Area. 

#NumbiFest

In 2019 Barni collaborated with Equality Arizona on a film series, Arizona Stories, that profiles LGBTQI and Two Spirit individuals from across the state of Arizona. In 2019 Barni organized the first Somali American public art in Phoenix Arizona with artist from the PANA and the Somali Association of Arizona. In 2018 Barni lead two delegations of indigenous leaders and entrepreneurs from Native American communities in southern Chile to and from California and Arizona. In 2018 Barni’s work was featured in Rebecca Schreiber’s The Undocumented Everyday, which examines how undocumented migrants are using film, video, and other documentary media to challenge surveillance, detention, and deportation. In 2017 Barni travelled to southern Chile to launch Yikalay Zomo, an entrepreneurship and technology program. In 2016 Barni travelled with Opal Tometi, Executive Director of Black Alliance for Just Immigration and co-founder of Black Lives Matter to document an encounter with Proceso de Comunidades Negras and Afro-Colombian leaders. Barni spoke at University of New Mexico’s Transnational Americas Research cluster about the use of media in the Migrant’s Rights Movement in 2016.  Generation Justice produced this radio segment with Barni after her presentation. Barni curated the 2015 Numbi Arts International Film Festival taking place on three continents in Atlanta, London and Hargeisa. In 2014 Barni was chosen to attend Storytelling Somalia, an artist retreat of Somali artists from across the globe, hosted by the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations, The Radical Middle Way and the Institute of Narrative Growth. In 2014 Barni was given an award of appreciation by the Somali Association of Arizona for her “Relentless Dedication to the Somali Community.” In 2013 Barni was chosen to attend the first La Escuelita hosted by the Zapatistas in Chiapas, Mexico. In 2013 she was awarded the “People’s Media Award” by Puente Arizona. In 2012 after speaking at the Women Who Rock (Un)Conference, Rebecca Simms & Angelica Macklin created a video interview about Barni’s work for the University of Washington. Barni holds a BA in Political Science with a minor in Interdisciplinary Arts and a Masters of Arts in Broadcasting.