Riyad Koya

Riyad Koya, Development Associate

Riyad Koya arrives to the Santa Rosa Symphony and the performing arts from the humanities, where he has been a scholar of South Asian law, labor, and migration. He has published articles in Law and History Review and the Journal of World History, and an oral history of the labor economist Lloyd Ulman with UC Berkeley’s Regional Oral History Office. His scholarship has been supported by grants from the Mellon Foundation, the American Council of Learned Societies, and the American Institute of Indian Studies. As a Ph.D. student at UC Berkeley, he taught South Asian History and World History. At the University of Michigan, he was a Program Associate for the Program on Intergroup Relations; at UC Santa Cruz he served as a writing tutor at the Oakes Learning Center. Riyad has a lifelong passion for music and writing, two interests combined in his role with the Symphony.

He played the French horn until the eleventh grade, competing with his high school orchestra in an international youth music festival in Vienna. He has lived in Santa Rosa for over twenty years and enjoys soccer, hiking, cooking, gardening, and the marvelous company of his wife and son.