Our Speakers

Dalia Mogahed is the Director of Research at the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding, where she leads the organization's pioneering research and thought leadership programs on American Muslims. Mogahed is former Executive Director of the Gallup Center for Muslim Studies, where she led the analysis of surveys of Muslim communities worldwide. With John L. Esposito, she coauthored the book Who Speaks for Islam? What a Billion Muslims Really Think. President Barack Obama appointed Mogahed to the President’s Advisory Council on Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships in 2009. She was invited to testify before the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations about U.S. engagement with Muslim communities, and she provided significant contributions to the Homeland Security Advisory Council’s Countering Violent Extremism Working Group recommendations. She is a frequent expert commentator in global media outlets and international forums. She is also the CEO of Mogahed Consulting.

Chris is a passionate Muslim American entrepreneur committed to building up the global Muslim community to reach its full potential. He was born in Malaysia, raised in the United States and at the age of 16 became a Muslim through the influence of a friend and the Autobiography of Malcolm X. Chris was a top engineering graduate from the University of Michigan where he led the Muslim Students Association as President to win Student Organization of the Year. He received a masters in educational leadership and prior to starting LaunchGood was a teacher at one of the top boarding schools in the world, founded an Arabic non-profit, and was a producer for Bilal's Stand, an award-winning Sundance film about an American Muslim. He started working on LaunchGood in 2011 and launched the site in 2013. In just over a year LaunchGood has already helped raise over $1 million for more than 100 projects across 13 countries. Chris currently lives in Dearborn, Michigan with his wife Amani and new daughter Maryam Yusra, and is an active community volunteer for University Muslim life and new Muslim work.

Naushad Virji was born in Italy in 1971 but has lived in Florida since 1975. Naushad earned a degree in business administration from the University of Florida and then went on to successfully complete his series 65 NASD examination to become a registered investment advisor representative. Based in our Orlando area office, Naushad is the CEO of ShariaPortfolio. With an interest in activism and community service, Naushad co-founded the United Muslim Foundation, where he currently serves on the board of directors. He is also a board member of Mercy-USA, a Michigan based non-profit dedicated to alleviating human suffering and supporting individuals and their communities to become more self-sufficient. Naushad is also on the advisory board of Advance Law, a Washington, DC based legal consulting firm that works with some of the largest companies in the world to help them retain quality law firms that have been carefully vetted to provide superior value. Living in Longwood, Florida, Naushad is happily married with three children. His personal interests include golf, tennis and spending leisure time with his family.

Dr. Hina W. Chaudhry is a cardiologist, scientist, and entrepreneur. She is currently Associate Professor of Medicine and Director of Cardiovascular Regenerative Medicine at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York. She holds a B.S. in Chemistry, a B.S. in Biology, a thesis in Physics, and a minor in Political Science from MIT, and obtained her M.D. with Honors from Harvard Medical School. Her former position was the Florence Irving Assistant Professor of Medicine at Columbia University. She has won multiple awards in her field of cardiology including the American Heart Association’s Clinician-Scientist Award, an NIH Research Career Award, AstraZeneca’s Young Investigator Prize and was named TEDMED Innovation Scholar 2013. She was selected for the ‘Genius’ Edition of Esquire Magazine, won Best Manuscript Award from the American Heart Association, and the Sitara Imtiaz Medal from the Government of Pakistan. She is a Principal Scientist and Award holder of the New York State Stem Cell Board. She has held continuous research funding from either the NIH, AHA, or NY Stem Cell Board for almost 20 years. In addition to her academic career, she is also Founder, Chief Scientific Officer, and Chairman of the Board of VentriNova, a privately-held biotech company based on her patent portfolio that is developing novel clinical treatments for cardiac regeneration. VentriNova was awarded the highest score nationally seen in a 5-year period for NIH small business grants through the NHLBI, selected as one of the 50 most innovative healthcare startups globally by TEDMED, top 10 women-led healthcare companies in the US by Springboard Enterprises 2014 and won a National Innovation Award 2014 at the TechConnect World Innovation Summit 2014. VentriNova is venture-backed by Broadview Ventures and is now in advanced stage negotiations for a Series A financing with several blue-chip VCs.

Arun Saraswat brings over 15 years of technology consulting, startup and executive experience to MindPropel. Formerly he served as VP of Bayyinah LLC, where he growth hacked the company to over 10X results across multiple metrics. Annual revenue grew from 6 figures to 8, employees went from 4 to 45, departments increased from 2 to 8, social media reach grew to millions—all within a 24 month period. He also helped grow Bayyinah TV, the largest (to date) Islamic video on-demand platform, to over 50,000 subscribers. Prior to Bayyinah, Arun worked on a variety of commercial and federal software development and mobile projects in collaboration with companies such as IBM, Canon USA, Mercedes Benz USA, and many more. Arun has also played a founding role in education, technology, and real estate investment startups.

Mr. Elsayed is President and CEO of Guidance Financial Group LLC and Guidance Residential LLC. He is a leading U.S. mortgage industry executive with broad national experience in all aspects of the business, including sales and operations. He is an accomplished leader in start-up and high-growth business environments and has extensive experience in building motivated teams to achieve and exceed target objectives. Mr. Elsayed was previously President and CEO of HomeView Lending, where he helped start the company and build its sales and operating structure. Prior to HomeView, he held various executive positions with New Century Mortgage Corporation, culminating in the position of President of the Wholesale Division, where he assumed full P&L responsibility and grew annual production from US $4 billion to US $46 billion over a three-year period.

Samina Akram has a wealth of experience in the banking industry specialising in the field of Islamic and Ethical finance. For the past decade, she has worked for investment, private and commercial banks across a range of disciplines. From 2005-2009, Samina was at Merrill Lynch International Bank where she was instrumental in heading up the growth and expansion of their Islamic finance business.

In April 2009, Samina decided to branch out as an independent Islamic finance consultant. Her expertise and extensive knowledge have been crucial in bringing together key stakeholders for the expansion of the sector. She has long-established working relations with governments, Investment banks, corporate investors, trade organisations and senior industry executives.

Her exceptional contributions to the Islamic finance industry have won her immense respect, public recognition and multiple business awards. She is a recipient of the United Nation's Women's Federation for World Peace award. Other accolades include runner-up of the Women of Future Awards under the category of 'Business Women of the Future' and being shortlisted in the European Muslim Women of Influence list. Most recently she has been recognised by Islamic finance review ISFIRE as being among the 20 most distinguished women in Islamic finance globally; with a number five ranking’. Samina is also the founder of the Women in Islamic & Ethical finance forum (WIEFF).

Samina has read Philosophy and holds a Masters degree in Psychology of Religion from Heythrop College, University of London.

Mr. Ahmad Ashkar is the Founder and CEO of the Hult Prize Foundation - named by TIME Magazine as one of the top five initiatives changing the world. Ahmad specializes in entrepreneurship, innovation, new market entry and global expansion and is on the advisory board of the UNDP. He is one of the world’s foremost experts in crowd and venture philanthropy and has been recognized as one of the top 10 entrepreneurs in the Middle East by Gulf Business.

Since founding the Hult Prize in 2009, he has led the growth of the initiative into the world’s largest millennial start-up movement for social good with established offices around the globe, hundreds of campus chapters in over 130 countries and strategic partnerships in place with President Bill Clinton and the Clinton Foundation. He has pioneered an alternative model of giving, which is centered around the development of robust start-up pipelines that focus on solving market-based challenges, ultimately transforming business minds from around the world into change agents for sustainable impact by leveraging crowd. Through the power of the Hult Prize hub and spoke university network, the Hult Prize is able to cultivate and build a whole new era of entrepreneurs that are disrupting at the intersection of doing good and doing well through custom tailored development of businesses which are impact centered, profit minded and market driven. The Hult Prize has been called “the Noble Prize for students,” and its portfolio of start-ups includes trailblazers in food security, healthcare, education and clean water.

Ahmad also serves as an adviser to family offices, private and government sector entities across the Middle East and Latin America, where he consults on economic empowerment and entrepreneurship, innovation, crowd science, social entrepreneurship and endowments. An expert in youth unemployment and crowded urban spaces, Ahmad is a recognized authority in his space, having been profiled as a social innovator by Harvard Business Review and distinguished as one of the top CEOs in the Middle East, recently appearing in cover stories for Arabian Business and INC.

He has regularly appeared as a coach and speaker at the World Economic Forum, UN and other notable gatherings. He has appeared on Al-Jazeera, Bloomberg, CCTV, CNN, CNBC, FOX, MBC and other major media outlets world-wide and has been profiled by leading publications in the Americas including, US, Brazil, Peru, Colombia, Ecquador, Mexico, and across the Middle East and Europe. He has been referred as “one of the future leaders of the Arab Youth” by Gulf News in a front-page feature. Most recently, the Boston Globe recognized Ahmad and the Hult Prize as one of the top companies in their annual “Game-Changer” report.

As a Palestinian-American, Ahmad serves as an independent advisor to the municipality of his hometown of Tulkarm, West Bank, where he is also an active entrepreneur. Ahmad has founded multiple companies, arranged a series of public-private partnerships and developed groundbreaking action and impact-based educational programs. He serves as an advisor / board member to several companies across the tech, food, wellness, leisure and hospitality sectors. He is also a resident adviser to the economic development department of George Mason University and is a guest lecturer at MIT Sloan, Georgetown and the Hult International Business School – where he earned his MBA in international business and was the 2015 alumnus of the year.

Michael Strong is a co-founder of Conscious Capitalism, the premier organization integrating conscious behavior and capitalism. He is the lead author of Be the Solution: How Entrepreneurs and Conscious Capitalists Can Solve All the World’s Problems, co-authored with Whole Foods Market co-founder and CEO John Mackey, Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Mohammad Yunus, founder of Instituto de Libertad y Democrocia Hernando de Soto, and others. For the past ten years Michael has worked with the leaders of some of the world’s leading purpose-driven companies to create a more effective integration of purpose and profit. Michael is currently working on “Startup Cities,” a city-scale project designed to create jobs and prosperity in developing nations, based in part on the model piloted by the Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC). He serves on the board of his wife’s company, Tiossan, a high-end skin care products company based on indigenous Senegalese recipes. Prior to his work on Conscious Capitalism, Michael spent fifteen years as an educational entrepreneur, creating several high performance schools across the U.S.

Karen Hunt Ahmed received a BA and MBA from Washington University in St. Louis and a PhD from The University of Chicago. Her current position is Director for Institutional Advancement at East-West University in Chicago. She also serves as Deputy Executive Director for the World Engagement Institute. She was formerly President of Chicago Islamic Microfinance Project, a not for profit economic development organization that provides business education and Shari'a compliant microcredit to entrepreneurs in Chicago, and Visiting Assistant Professor of Finance and Management at DePaul University.

Dr. Hunt Ahmed has worked in the banking sector in Chicago and in private equity in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Her research interests include culture and identity, financial empowerment, Islamic finance, microfinance and the socialization of economic behavior. Her edited volume, Contemporary Islamic Finance: Innovations, Applications and Best Practices was published by Wiley & Sons in 2013. A forthcoming book entitled Inside Islamic Finance: An Industry and its Culture will be released in 2017.

Larry Richards has over thirty-five years’ experience in executive management, technology design, and project management.

He is the founder of the BEX Global, a strategic architecture and asset monetization firm in Princeton, New Jersey. He works as a business advisor and project manager with a number of domestic (United States) and international investors, companies, business accelerators, entrepreneurial competitions, academic institutions, economic development agencies, and private organizations.

He began his career at Aetna where he held a series of management positions in the Group Health Insurance Division. After leaving Aetna and receiving his MBA he became a Senior Manager in the Financial Services Consulting Practice at Ernst & Young. He later held partnership positions in the consulting practices at The Mac Group, Gemini Consulting (now part of Gap Gemini Ernst & Young), and KPMG.

From 2004-2005 Mr. Richards served as CEO of Diversified Information Technologies, a multi-product information management company serving financial services and healthcare companies, in Scranton, Pennsylvania. From 2005-2008 he served as CEO of the Diversity Financial Network, a financial services intermediary focused on economic development in the African American and Hispanic communities.

BEX Global helps individuals and organizations design new business modes; respond to evolving market conditions; monetize their assets in optimal fashion; and improve their strategic, financial, and competitive performance. BEX currently focuses on second order innovation in the financial services industry, closure of escalating wealth and asset gaps, cross-sector cost reductions in the healthcare industry, and community-to-community improvements in the quality of healthcare.

During his career Mr. Richards has managed or supported projects for large corporations such as Guardian Insurance Company, Aetna, CIGNA, Alex Brown, General Electric, McNeil Labs, Citibank, Prudential, Merrill Lynch, Travelers, AT&T, Mercy Hospitals, Lucent Technologies, and Wachovia. Mr. Richards also served as executive-in-residence during design and implementation of multi-year reengineering projects at New York Life and Standard Life/Royal Bank of Scotland’s Canadian operations.

Mr. Richards lives in Princeton, New Jersey with his wife and four children. He is the author of several articles about strategy management and technology design. He has been a frequent speaker at trade association meetings and client-sponsored events. He holds a BA in History, Summa Cum Laude, from the University of Maine and a MBA in Strategic Management from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.

MIIM Designs was established in Palo Alto, California by founder and principal designer, Maryam Eskandari. As an educator, Eskandari has directed intensive design research that has been published and exhibited. After a decade of designing in both corporate and private sector, Eskandari returned back to focus on design that is rooted in History, Theory, and Criticism of architecture. Prior to establishing MIIM Designs, Eskandari was the Director of the American Institute of Architect Associates, and at DLR Group she led the design team to several award-winning projects, including the Christine and Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Library and Learning Center at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, Phoenix College Fine Arts, and Eric Fischer Gallery. MIIM Designs has been recognized nationally and internationally with numerous awards, publications, and exhibitions. In 2012, MIIM Designs LLC was awarded the "Faith and Form Award" from The American Institute of Architects. The International Museum of Women in San Francisco awarded MIIM Designs for the "Sacred Space" exhibit, re-configuring gendered spaces in religious architecture. Recently, MIIM Designs was the architect for the new Children’s Museum of Manhattan’s America to Zanzibar: Muslim Cultures Near and Far exhibit. MIIM Designs currently is working on projects in New York City, San Francisco Bay Area, Accra, and New Delhi.

Eskandari is a Rothschild Fellow at Cambridge Judge Business School and graduated from Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture at Harvard + MIT. She serves on the Board of Open Architecture Collaborative and Harvard Iranian Alumni Association and is an Advisor to Harvard's FDR Foundation, CleanAcwa, and the 1947 Partition Archives. She is currently an Academic Advisor at Harvard University for History of Art and Architecture and Innovation Lab at Harvard Business School.

Khaled saw a computer for the first time when he was 18 years old in Alexandria, Egypt. After going on to complete his Masters in Computer Science from Virginia Tech and leading Rackspace’s corporate strategy, Khaled knew it was time to return to his roots of entrepreneurship. He was inspired by the impact technology had in shaping the Arab Spring and had been introduced to his now co-founder, James Beshara, through a mentor. Together they launched Tilt, a platform that powers the collective creation of the world by helping people pool money from their groups for free.

Khaled and James built the Tilt platform to give people an easy and highly social way to organize and collaborate financially -- whether it's renting a boat with friends, a tailgate for Saturday’s big game, sending the Jamaican Bobsled team to the Olympics, a mayoral race, or protecting a community from rising crime, Tilt has powered it all. Tilt's sweet spot and main demographic is college students - we're the fastest growing app on college campuses today. Today, Tilt is growing by 41% month over month on college campuses and is now available in 9 countries. It’s consistently on various “best places to work” lists, it is one of only 2-3 companies that Andreessen Horowitz has led multiple rounds in, and at only 3 and a half years is leading the charge of a new generation of crowdfunding apps built for a mobile world.

Bilal Khan is the Managing Director of OneEleven, a post-seed technology accelerator focused on helping Canada’s most promising, high-growth startups commercialize their technologies and scale their operations. OneEleven is a unique partnership between industry, venture capital, government and academia with the objective of making Canada a global leader in the innovation economy.

Bilal sits on the Board of Directors of the Canadian Club of Toronto, the Business Advisory Group of the Ontario Retirement Pension Plan (ORPP), the Advisory Board of IBM’s I^3 Project (an IBM Watson initiative), the Advisory Board of the Canadian Innovation Exchange (CIX), and the Advisory Board of Technicity at the City of Toronto.

Prior to joining OneEleven, Bilal was the Director of Policy and Senior Advisor to three consecutive Minister’s of Economic Development, Trade and Innovation for the Province of Ontario where he was responsible for establishing and implementing policies to help advance Ontario’s economy. A lawyer, Bilal spent his early career practicing corporate and securities law as Legal Counsel to Russell Investments, a U.S. based multi-asset manager(acquired by the London Stock Exchange Group). Bilal has also worked at the United Nations at the Centre for Business and Human Rights.

Bilal is a Fellow at the Munk School of Global Affairs at the University of Toronto where he both teaches and advises on innovation policy and is also a Fellow at the Brookfield Institute for Innovation and Entrepreneurship at Ryerson University.

Bilal is an alumnus of Singularity University at the NASA Ames Research Centre in the area of exponential technologies and holds a JD from the University of Windsor, Faculty of Law.

Aamir Abdul Rehman is Managing Director of Fajr Capital Advisors, a specialist advisory firm focused on key Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) markets. The firm advises governments, multi-lateral bodies, and private investors on matters pertaining to public policy, investment flows, and Islamic finance. Prior to joining Fajr Capital, Mr. Rehman was Global Head of Strategy at HSBC Amanah, where he oversaw strategy development across the full range of HSBC Amanah’s business lines and regions. Prior to HSBC, he was a consultant with the Boston Consulting Group, advising Fortune 500 and prominent global clients. He is author of Dubai & Co.: Global Strategies for Doing Business in the Gulf States (McGraw-Hill 2007) and Gulf Capital and Islamic Finance: The Rise of the New Global Players (McGraw-Hill 2009). He holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Harvard University, and an MBA from the Harvard Business School.

Reem is Senior Associate at DinarStandard, a specialized market research and advisory firm focused on the emerging Islamic markets of Halal/Tayyab food, the Muslim-friendly travel market, and Islamic/Ethical Finance. Reem leads DinarStandard’s Travel/Tourism sector practice. Recent projects include, leading the team that implemented a Halal Travel Benefits Program in South East Asia for a global technology and payment processing firm, delivering a Muslim travel market opportunity workshop, developing a travel portal marketing plan and campaign, authoring the Muslim Travel section of the State of the Global Islamic Economy Report 2013/2014/2015/2016. Reem has worked with clients such as Thomson Reuters, MasterCard and the Marriott. Reem frequently speaks at industry events, including ITB Berlin, the world’s largest tourism trade fair, and the Global Islamic Economy Summit. Before joining DinarStandard, Reem provided marketing consulting to small businesses in the US, and held marketing and managerial positions within both the banking and cosmetics industry. Reem holds a BA in English from Ain Shams University in Cairo, as well as the CIM Advanced Marketing Certificate from the Chartered Institute of Marketing in the UK.

Dustin Craun is the CEO and Founder of Ummah Wide, a digital media and film production startup telling stories that transcend the borders of global communities. He is also the co-founder of MPower Change an online advocacy platform focused on Muslim communities. He is a social innovator, writer, digital strategist, community organizer and educator. His writings on race, philosophy, Islam and global Muslim communities have been published in academic journals and popular publications.

Dr. Mohamed Issa is recognized as one of the top 500 leaders worldwide making the Islamic economy by Islamica 500. Dr. Issa started his career in pharmaceuticals at Hoffman La-Roche as a manager working on commercializing drugs for infectious diseases after receiving his doctorate in pharmacology from St. John’s University in the USA. In 2007 he joined Pfizer to lead their neuroscience team responsible for annual revenues in excess of $800 million dollars working in disease states such as bipolar, depression and schizophrenia. While at Pfizer Dr. Issa assumed roles of increasing responsibilities including leading US and global marketing teams as well as mergers and acquisitions for Pfizer’s specialty care portfolio. In 2012, Dr. Issa was recruited by Johnson and Johnson to lead the launch of a cure for Hepatitis C which eventually became the second most successful launch in pharmaceutical history. During his tenure at Pfizer and J&J, Dr. Issa started and completed his MBA at NYU stern school of business in the USA with a focus on economics and finance. While at Stern he reunited with Muslim doctors to start Noor Pharmaceuticals, the first and only US based halal pharmaceutical company and makers of NoorVitamins™. As CEO, Dr. Issa led Noor to become the leading halal pharmaceutical company in the world by leading the organization through seed and investor financing, launching NoorVitamins™ both in the US and select global markets and contract negotiations with major global retailers. Today, NoorVitamins™ is the leading halal vitamin brand globally and aggressively penetrating the mass market supplement market. NoorVitamins™ are found in hundreds of pharmacies across the US including select Walgreen’s, Whole Foods, Duane Reade Stores and several international markets. Noor was recently recognized with the NEXTY award by the natural products food sector highlighting the impact the company is making in the mass market. Finally, Noor recently partnered with Vitamin Angels, the leading nonprofit vitamin distribution agency to develop and distribute Halal prenatal vitamins to countries in need. Today, Dr. Issa serves as President and CEO of Noor Pharmaceuticals.

Faraz Khan is a Princeton based artist working exclusively in contemporary style Arabic calligraphy and design. He was an Artist in Residence at the Arts Council of Princeton for the year 2015 and a co-founder of Faraz Khan Art Studio, a space dedicated to grassroots American Islamic Art movement in Princeton, New Jersey. He serves as an advisor to the Center for Middle Eastern Studies, Rutgers University. His work is available online at FarazKhanArtStudio.com.