A collaboration between the non-profit organization Women in Music and Berklee emerged to organize a number of on and off-campus seminars, concerts and conversations to inspire action around Women in Music’s mission “to advance the awareness, equality, diversity, heritage, opportunities, and cultural aspects of women in the musical arts through education, support, empowerment, and recognition”. This initiative constituted the end-of-year thesis (Culminating Experience) of three graduate students of the Global Entertainment and Music Business program at Berklee Valencia of the class of 2018, and three more of the class of 2019. These teams also produced two compilation albums in collaboration with student-led record label Disrupcion Record, the first one entitled “Sincerely, Women” and the second one “Women in Music”. In its first edition (2017-2018), this project constituted the first official collaboration with the Women in Music organization that welcomed a male contributor.

Ali was recruited to arrange and produce one of the tracks on the first album, Georgia On My Mind. As there are a multitude of recordings in existence, he researched and discovered that most of them either fell into the traditional jazz or 6/8 blues categories, and so wanted to do something a bit different with it. He teamed up with London-based Composer & Arranger Benjamin Burrell to create a unique arrangement in the style of a gospel shuffle.