Code: SL22803
Dates: April 1, 2025
Meets: 7:00 PM to 8:30 PM
Sessions: 1
Location: Lower Merion High School
Course Fee: $49.00
There are still openings remaining at this time.
Muhammad Abdul-Hadi
Muhammad Abdul-Hadi is the Founder and Owner of Down North Pizza, a mission-driven restaurant that exclusively hires formerly incarcerated individuals and serves up pies with a purpose in Philadelphia. Leveraging his academic background in criminal justice and experiences as an entrepreneur, Muhammad embarked on a path to reimagine a business leader’s role in supporting underserved communities. Through fair wages, innovative hiring practices, and community building, he is on a mission to help reduce recidivism rates across the city of Philadelphia and beyond. This year, Muhammad’s outstanding contributions earned him The James Beard Foundation’s 2024 Leadership Award, recognizing achievement by individuals actively working to set standards that create more equitable, just, sustainable, and economically viable food systems. Muhammad also sat on The James Beard Foundation’s Legacy Network Cohort, an honor bestowed upon emerging leaders in the culinary industry. He is the author of We The Pizza, a Clarkson Potter-published cookbook set for launch in February 2025. Alongside cinematic photography and award-winning recipes, We the Pizza will tell the Down North story about how the restaurant fulfills its mission to educate and support the formerly incarcerated. Muhammad is the Founder of Down North Foundation, a non-profit organization focused on community development, education, and improvement. His latest initiative includes the Down North Treehouse, a communal space built from a refurbished library, aiming to address the school-to-prison pipeline by empowering students to find purposeful and financially rewarding careers in the tech sector. Muhammad hopes to spread the mission of Down North throughout the country, uplifting similar communities by addressing the barrier to success through employment opportunities and neighborhood initiatives ACCOLADES - Recipient of the 2024 James Beard Leadership Award - Advisor for the James Beard Foundation’s 2023-2024 Legacy Network Cohort - Robert Wood Johnson Interdisciplinary Research Leaders Fellow - Awarded New York Time’s 50 Best Restaurants in America 2021 - Awarded Bon Appetit’s Head of the Table 2021