Newsweek: 30 Firsts for Muslims in America, from Jefferson’s Ramadan Dinner to Ali’s Oscar

by

This timely and thoughtful Newsweek article showcases 30 Muslim American trailblazers and notable firsts. While not a definitive account by any means, the piece captures some of the most memorable breakthroughs that have imprinted the collective memory of the Muslim American community and entered the consciousness of broader American culture and society. It also recognizes MAPS’ Advisory Council member, Dr. Sadaf Jaffer as the first female Muslim mayor in America. Read the full Newsweek article by Steve Friess here.

Leave a Comment

 

Leveraging her expertise in international development, foreign policy, diplomacy, & advocacy, Fatema Z. Sumar leads efforts to fight poverty by transforming global systems in reaching vulnerable populations. She is the author of the book, The Development Diplomat: Working Across Borders, Boardrooms, and Bureaucracies to End Poverty.

Fatema most recently served as the Vice President of Compact Operations at the US Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC), a role appointed by President Biden. She oversaw all the agency’s compacts – MCC’s signature grant investment vehicle to reduce poverty. She previously served as MCC’s Deputy Vice President for Europe, Asia, the Pacific, and Latin America.

Fatema has a distinguished career in the U.S. government in both executive & legislative branches. She previously served as the Deputy Assistant Secretary for South and Central Asia at the US Department of State where she led efforts to expand regional economic and energy connectivity & as a Presidential Management Fellow. In Congress, she was a Senior Professional Staff Member on the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee focused on Afghanistan, Pakistan, & the broader region.

In civil society, Fatema was the Vice President of Global Programs at Oxfam America where she oversaw regional development & humanitarian response to fight the injustice of poverty. Early in her career, she also worked at the American Civil Liberties Union.

Fatema sits on Advisory Boards for Princeton, Cornell, & Indiana universities & on the Advisory Council for Muslim Americans in Public Service. She has been published in the Stanford Social Innovation Review, The New Republic, The Hill, & other outlets. She is a frequent guest speaker & has testified before the U.S. House of Representatives & U.S. Senate.

Fatema has a MPA from Princeton University’s School of Public and International Affairs and a BA in Government from Cornell University. She studied abroad at the American University in Cairo and received an honorary doctorate from the Middlebury Institute of International Studies in Monterey.

Rummi Khan is an experienced campaign manager, project manager, and strategist at the intersection of culture, faith communities, and politics. He has over a decade of experience in public affairs, political campaigns, community engagement, and event management.

Rummi currently serves as Chief Operating Officer for the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC), a national public affairs nonprofit organization working to promote and strengthen American pluralism by increasing understanding and improving policies that impact American Muslims for the past 30 years.

Prior to MPAC, Rummi co-founded an international arts and culture initiative and served in leadership roles on Presidential, Congressional, and Federal Policy campaigns. Rummi can be reached at board@mapsnational.org.

Jermaine Perry is a business operations professional specializing in operations management, systems thinking, and project management. He currently works at the U.S. Small Business Administration developing and executing program-level policies and procedures.

Jermaine is a graduate of Central State University (OH) and received his MBA from Ohio Dominican University. Additionally, he is an Excellence in Government Fellow and Returned Peace Corps Volunteer.

Ahmad Maaty is a Senior Economist with the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA), where he conducts regulatory analyses and evaluations of the societal impacts of proposed safety and environmental regulations on the U.S. oil, gas and energy transportation industries. 

He worked in a similar regulatory capacity at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, including as Acting Chief Economist with the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), and previously as an economic growth advisor with the U.S. Department of State’s Office of U.S. Foreign Assistance Resources, among other international and multilateral institutions.

Ahmad holds a BBA from George Washington University and an MPA from Cornell University.

Learn more about MAPS at DOT here.

Tamim is a born-and-raised Chicagoan and a career public service professional with 19+  years of Federal experience. He has served in roles and specializations ranging from project management, contracting, real estate development, land use, environmental remediation, economic development and National program administration across stints with the General Services Administration (GSA), the Department of Veteran Affairs (VA) and currently with the Department of Homeland Security. 

His love for community expresses itself through non-profit organizations, where he serves on the Board of Directors for the Muslim Caucus Education Collective, Green Muslims and MAPS as an at-large Board member. His diverse educational background, B.A. in Philosophy, B.S. in Finance, M.A. in Education with a focus on transformational leadership, emotional and social intelligence keep him seeking new opportunities to learn and engage.

Asad Nawaz has formerly served successive terms as Vice President and President of the American Muslim and Arabic Cultural Association (AMACA) at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO).

Asad began his public service career in 2004 examining patent applications at the USPTO. Currently a Supervisory Patent Examiner, he leads a group of primary and junior patent examiners in the field of Multiplex Communications and VoIP. Asad has worked with European Patent Office (EPO) counterparts on the Cooperate Patent Classification System, and has served as an Advisor to the Commissioner for Patents. 

In furtherance of his strong belief in personal and professional development, Asad has served as lead Trainer in the Patent Training Academy and as a Resource Supervisor at the Office of Innovation Development. He is also in the process of obtaining his Associate Certified Coach (ICF) credential as part of USPTO’s Career Coach Program. 

Asad completed an Executive Education Certificate in Public Leadership from the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, where he was also part of the Senior Executive Fellows program. Asad received a BS in Computer Science and an MS in Information Security and Assurance from George Mason University. He can be reached at professionaldevelopment@mapsnational.org.

 

Muqaddas Ejaz is a community advocate and activist. She is currently serving her second term as a member of New Jersey’s Cherry Hill Democratic Committee, where she was the first Muslim elected in 2017. Her leadership skills have been applied on various boards, including the Camden County Cultural and Heritage Commission. The Commission works to strengthen the cultural framework of Camden County by educating the community and supporting local organizations with funding and technical assistance to deepen the interactions between cultural practitioners and residents. 

Devoted to serving others, Muqaddas remains involved in several grassroots organizations that work towards the development of local communities and the betterment of New Jersey’s diverse citizens. She serves as the Director of Community Engagement for The Muslim Network, co-led the First Annual Camden County S.U.R.E. (Students United for Respect & Equity) Summit for the youth, and co-founder of Know Your Muslim Neighbor, South Jersey. Previously, she has also served as the lead for the English as a Second Language and Computer Literacy program at the Muslim American Community Association and has designed, planned, and led other seminars, community and cultural events for the diverse community. 

Muqaddas has been recently recognized by the National Association of Women Business Owners (NAWBO) chapter of South Jersey as Community Advocate of the Year. She was also awarded the Camden County Freedom Medal in 2018 for her community service, and U.S. Congressman Donald Norcross (NJ-1) recognized her as a Woman of Honor in Education. She can be reached at outreach@mapsnational.org.

Mariya Ilyas is a career U.S. diplomat. As a political-coned Foreign Service Officer, she is currently serving as the Staff Assistant to Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield at the U.S. Mission to the United Nations in New York. 

Her previous assignments include political-military officer in the Office of Regional Security and Arms Transfers in the Bureau of Political-Military Affairs in Washington D.C., non-immigrant visa chief at the U.S. Embassy Doha, and vice consul at the U.S. Embassy Amman. 

Prior to joining the U.S. Foreign Service as a Thomas R. Pickering Foreign Affairs Fellow in 2018, she taught English as a Fulbright Scholar in Turkey and worked as a data analyst at Liberty Mutual Insurance in Boston. 

Mariya holds a master’s in security studies and maritime affairs from The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University and a bachelor’s in mathematics from Bowdoin College. Mariya volunteers her time as the co-chair of U.S. State Department’s employee organization Muslim Americans and Friends at State (AMFAS) and as a board member of the nonprofit organization Muslim Americans in Public Service (MAPS). She can be reached at profdev@mapsnational.org. 

 

Dr. Leila Hanafi is a Moroccan-American international development lawyer with a record of service in international organizations and  multilateral institutions. She is currently a senior legal adviser with the World Bank Group and adjunct law professor at George Washington University Law School in Washington D.C.  Leila is Founder and Principal of ARPA international Law Group, an international development law firm, and has served in legal advisory roles to United Nations agencies, including UNOPS, UNDP and the UN Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA), as well as foreign governments.

Previously, Leila oversaw the International Criminal Court’s Middle East and North Africa Coalition work and served as staff attorney and programs manager of the American Bar Association (ABA) World Justice Project. Amidst the Arab Spring reforms, she was selected by the Moroccan Government as Law Commissioner in the National Inter-Governmental Commission for Policy Dialogue and Constitutional Reforms.

Leila is a graduate of American University, Georgetown University, and George Washington University Law School in Washington D.C., and earned her doctorate in law in the United Kingdom under a fully funded merit doctoral scholarship. She can be reached at board@mapsnational.org.

 

David Hunsicker is one of the founding members of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) Muslims Employee Resource Group (UMERG) and a current member of their board. He is a Senior Conflict and Peacebuilding Advisor and the Middle East Team Leader in USAID’s Center for Conflict and Violence Prevention where he specializes in issues of religion, identity and conflict. 

David spent eight years living and working in the Central Asian Republics of the former Soviet Union, including three years as the Religion, State and Society Specialist in USAID’s Central Asian regional mission. In this capacity, he was responsible for advising USAID and U.S. Embassies in the five Central Asian republics on integrating religious communities into U.S. Government-funded development programming. Previously, David also worked at the U.S. Embassy in Uzbekistan where he provided support to local human rights groups and facilitated Embassy outreach to religious leaders. 

David holds a BA in Islamic Studies from the University of Michigan and an MA in Near Eastern Languages and Civilization from the University of Washington. He can be reached at board@mapsnational.org.

Fozia Janjua sits on the Township Council in the Philadelphia suburb of Mt. Laurel, New Jersey and is the first Muslim and Pakistani-American councilwoman elected to office in South Jersey. An educator who has a passion for service and social justice, Fozia is a founding board member of a local nonprofit called CommunitySJP whose mission is to unite communities through service and promote civic engagement.

A longtime community organizer and public servant, Fozia has helped people navigate the housing, schooling, and justice system throughout the years. At an early age, Fozia started volunteering, working with, and advocating for the marginalized members of her local community.  

As a first-generation Pakistani American, and one of three girls, she considers herself fortunate to be born in one of the most inclusive cities in the world, San Francisco, California, and raised by two very progressive, socially conscious parents who instilled the values of hard work, education, and especially the concept of giving back.

Fozia graduated from the University of California at Berkeley with a degree in Sociology. She can be reached at board@mapsnational.org.

Dr. Nader Metwalli has been a staff scientist with the National Institute of Diabetes, Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK) at the National Institutes of Health’s (NIH) Bethesda, MD campus since early 2020. Before joining the NIH, he served as a patent examiner with the U.S. Patent and Trademark office (USPTO) working in the Alexandria, VA main office. 

Prior to Federal service, Nader has held a number of research and development centric roles throughout his career in private industry and entrepreneurship. 

Nader received his doctorate degree in bioengineering/biomedical engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology/Emory University in Atlanta, GA. He can be reached at board@mapsnational.org.

Rubina Halwani is a training, education, and inclusion consultant, and currently serves as an Instructional Designer for the State of Utah.

Her career spans over 20 years across multiple industries, including education, government, and public policy.

Rubina is recognized as an industry leader in Learning and Development. Her work has received acclaim and awards for high impact. Her strengths include leadership, public service, and empathy, and she has been recognized for her collaborative work towards building spaces of inclusion and religious plurality. 

Identifying as an American Muslim of South Asian heritage, Rubina has been active in her local and Muslim communities. Born and raised in Maryland, she has lived and worked in Washington DC, San Francisco, Iowa, and Utah. 

Rubina holds a B.A. degree in English Education and a Master’s degree in Educational Policy and Leadership Studies.

Fazal Mirza is a co-founder and Vice-President of the Muslim Americans in Public Service (MAPS) employee resource group at the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT), where he is a Senior Contracting Officer and Team Lead with the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA). With a $25 million warrant, and a FAC-C Level III certification, he has procured over $830 million in goods and services for the Federal government. His procurement expertise is with R&D contracts to strengthen the nations pipeline infrastructure, and complex IT services. Fazal leads a team of Contract Specialists on a day to day basis.

During his time at DOT, he was selected to be on a detail with the DOT Office of the Senior Procurement Executive, which involved implementing a Grants Management Certification Program within DOT and implementing policy for the Department’s 11,300 Acquisition Workforce employees. In addition, Fazal was selected to start a new IT Acquisition Center of Excellence (DOT IT ACE) Contracting Office, under which all IT commodities and services would be procured.

Fazal has also participated in the Partnership for Public Service’s Excellence in Government Fellowship program. He began Federal service procuring a variety of goods and services as a DOT Contract Specialist in 2009. Fazal is a graduate from the University of Florida’s Warrington’s School of Business, and serves his local community as a coach and a Girl Scout Troop Leader. Fazal can be reached at board@mapsnational.org.

Ramy Osman is Co-founder and current Treasurer of the American Muslim and Arabic Cultural Association (AMACA) at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), where he also coordinates Friday jumuah congregational prayers and Ramadan community iftar dinners. Ramy is a Patent Examiner of network technology patents at the USPTO, and received their Bronze Medal Award for Outstanding work performance.

Ramy also volunteers for various community and charity projects, and edited the final report, “NYC Coalition for Muslim School Holidays,” submitted to the New York City Board of Education ahead of their landmark 2015 decision to observe the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha.

Ramy holds a master’s degree in Telecommunications, and can be reached at board@mapsnational.org.

 

Maryum Saifee is Outreach Officer with Mosaic employee affinity group at the U.S. Department of State, where she is a career U.S. Foreign Service Officer. She recently took a sabbatical where she was a Council on Foreign Relations International Affairs Fellow and a Senior Visiting Fellow at the Truman Center for National Policy. Her overseas postings included Embassies Cairo and Baghdad, as well as U.S. Consulate Lahore. Maryum also served in domestic assignments in the Bureau of International Organization Affairs, the Secretary’s Office of Global Women’s Issues, and the Secretary’s Office of Religion and Global Affairs.

Prior to the Foreign Service, Maryum was a Peace Corps Volunteer in Jordan focused on girls’ education and an AmeriCorps Volunteer in Seattle working with South Asian and Muslim immigrant survivors of domestic violence. She also worked for the Ford Foundation, Women Deliver, the United Nations Development Programme, and the Acumen Fund.

Maryum is an alumna of the Presidential Leadership Scholars and the Council on Foreign Relations term membership programs, and is a graduate of Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs and the University of Texas at Austin. Maryum is participating in MAPS in her personal capacity, and can be reached at board@mapsnational.org.

 

Judge Dania Ayoubi is an Administrative Law Judge in the Office of Administrative Hearings for the State of Maryland, where she presides over appeals from over thirty state agencies. 

Prior to her appointment, she served in Federal government for almost ten years, most recently as Senior Counsel in the Office of Regulations at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), where she crafted consumer finance regulations and developed an expertise in the areas of debt collection, mortgages, and fair lending. She was also an Attorney Advisor at the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), where she worked to develop policies to extend broadband internet access to underserved parts of America.  
 
Judge Ayoubi previously worked at Hughes Hubbard and Reed LLP and clerked for Chief Judge Eric T. Washington at the D.C. Court of Appeals. A graduate of Georgetown University (A.B.) and Georgetown University Law Center (J.D.), Judge Ayoubi is a member of the National Association of Women Judges. 

 

Judge Faruqui has been serving as a Federal magistrate judge for the District of Columbia since September 2020.  He is the first Muslim Judge in the D.C. Circuit. 

Prior to his appointment, he was a Federal prosecutor, first in the United States Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Missouri, and then in the District of Columbia. 

Over the span of over twelve years of Federal service as an Assistant U.S. Attorney (AUSA), he prosecuted numerous criminal cases, most recently serving as the lead prosecutor for complex and novel crimes involving, for example, terrorists’ use of cryptocurrency, nuclear weapons proliferation, darknet sites dedicated to child exploitation, and antiquities theft. He also litigated over $700 million in money laundering and asset forfeiture proceedings. As a subject-matter expert, he has presented on cryptocurrency and anti-money laundering issues in conferences spanning from Europe to Asia and the Middle East.  

Prior to serving as a Federal prosecutor, Judge Faruqui worked at a corporate law firm where he focused on government investigations and general commercial litigation.

Judge Faruqui is a board member for Jobs for Homeless People, a non-profit that provides housing and vocational training to people in the D.C. metropolitan area. He also served as a Muslim-outreach coordinator for the U.S. Department of Justice and an as an adjunct professor at Harris-Stowe State University. He received his J.D. and undergraduate degree from Georgetown University.

 

​​​​Dr. Sadaf Jaffer is an educator and activist. She recently completed two terms as mayor of Montgomery Township, New Jersey. In January of 2019, she became the first South Asian woman to serve as mayor of a municipality in New Jersey, and the first Muslim woman to serve as mayor of a municipality in the United States.
 
Her signature initiatives included: creating and implementing a crisis communications plan to help Montgomery Township maintain some of the lowest COVID-19 infection and fatality rates in New Jersey; facilitating a participatory design process for the municipal center and library project started by her predecessors while securing millions of dollars in state funding; responding to demands for racial justice by coordinating meetings for Black community members and youth activists with the Township’s police leadership to build trust and mutual understanding; and inaugurating a Youth Leadership Council to elevate the voices of young people who are energized to lead.
 
​Sadaf is a Postdoctoral Research Associate in South Asian Studies at Princeton University where she teaches courses on South Asian, Islamic, and Asian American Studies. Jaffer currently serves as Chair of the Inclusion and Equity Committee of Montgomery Township and on the Board of Trustees for the New Jersey Council for the Humanities. She was one of the founding members of Inspiring South Asian American Women (ISAAW), a group dedicated to encouraging civic engagement among South Asian American women in New Jersey. She is on the Board of Directors for The New Agenda, an organization that promotes women’s economic empowerment and combats sexual harassment and sexual assault. 
 
​Sadaf earned her bachelor’s degree in Foreign Service from Georgetown University and obtained her PhD in Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations from Harvard University with a secondary field in Studies of Women, Gender, and Sexuality.

 

​​Madiha Latif is an innovative thinker with over 20 years of broad-based expertise in leadership, financial management and customer engagement.  She is very passionate about working to improve federal government operations for the greater good of her fellow Americans. 

Madiha is the Deputy Assistant Commissioner  within Revenue Collections Management (RCM) at the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Bureau of the Fiscal Service. She has oversight responsibility for providing executive day-to-day leadership for the Compliance and Reporting Group (CRG), in support of the Government’s collection and settlement of over $4.2 trillion in federal revenue each year (e.g., taxes, fees, fines, loan repayments, customs duties, donations) and the processing of 500 million transactions annually.

Madiha has also held leadership positions in RCM as the Agency Relationship Outreach and engagement Director where she transformed the way RCM facilitated adoption of innovative solutions to its 225+ federal agency customer universe implementing a holistic approach of a one voice methodology.  

Prior to joining the Federal government, Madiha held several leadership positions within the private sector supporting U.S. Department of State and U.S. Department of Homeland Security.  She is also a veteran, having served in war zones with the active duty Army. 

Madiha has an Executive Certificate in Public Leadership from Harvard Kennedy School, an Executive Master of Business Administration (EMBA) from the University of Maryland and Bachelor of Science in Organizational Management from University of Phoenix.

 

​​​​Ahmed Mousa is a life sciences entrepreneur with a background in molecular biology and an attorney with significant IP and FDA experience. Ahmed currently serves as Senior Vice President, Corporate Operations and General Counsel of Pieris Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: PIRS), a U.S.-German biotechnology company developing cutting-edge therapies in immuno-oncology and for respiratory disease. Ahmed serves as site head for the company’s U.S. office, oversees project leadership and quality assurance, and leads Pieris’ intellectual property, corporate secretary, and legal activities, including licensing and corporate legal as well as the Company’s global patent portfolio.
 

Prior to joining Pieris, Ahmed was an Associate at the law firm Kirkland & Ellis LLP, and an attorney with the law firm Covington & Burling LLP, where he represented pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies in a range of matters, including significant experience in generic and biosimilar drug litigation.

A founding Advisor to MAPS, Ahmed’s experience in public service included a stint with the U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary, and a judicial clerkship at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit.

Ahmed obtained undergraduate degrees in Government and Molecular Biology from Cornell University and a master’s degree in Biotechnology from Johns Hopkins University, with research experience prior to his legal career focused on tumor biology and angiogenesis. Ahmed graduated from Georgetown Law with honors, where he was Editor-in-Chief of the Georgetown Journal of International Law.

Dr. Asifa Quraishi-Landes is a full Professor of Law at the University of Wisconsin Law School, specializing in comparative Islamic and U.S. Constitutional law, with a current focus on modern Islamic constitutional theory.  Her career includes federal clerkships in the Eastern District of California and the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. A past Carnegie Scholar and Guggenheim Fellow, her recent publications includes “Legislating Morality and Other Illusions about Islamic Government.”  She is currently working on a book tentatively titled “Islamic Re-constitutionalism,” which presents a non-theocratic and non-secular model of Islamic constitutionalism for today’s Muslim-majority countries.

A lifelong leader in the Muslim American nonprofit scene, Asifa currently serves as Interim Co-Executive Director of Muslim Advocates, and on the governing boards of the Muslim Public Service Network (MPSN), Bayan Claremont Islamic Graduate School, and the Muslim Youth Camp of California.  She has been a past President and Board Member of NAML (National Association of Muslim Lawyers) as well as Karamah: Muslim Women Lawyers for Human Rights. She is also an affiliate of the Muslim Women’s League, and a Fellow with the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding  (ISPU).

She has served as a Public Delegate on the U.S. Delegation to the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women, the Task Force on Religion and the Making of U.S. Foreign Policy for the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, and as advisor to the Pew Task Force on Religion & Public Life.  

Professor Quraishi-Landes holds a doctorate from Harvard Law School and other degrees from Columbia Law School, the University of California at Davis, and the University of California at Berkeley.

Alisha develops and coordinates U.S. policy engagement in Burma as a Desk Officer at the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs (EAP), where she works with government agencies, international partners, and civil society to promote security, democratic governance, and humanitarian access.  She formerly advanced policies, public-private sector cooperation, and foreign assistance programming to counter global challenges and strengthen the rule of law in South Asia as a Program Advisor with in the Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs.

Prior to her Department experience, Alisha engaged with domestic and foreign policy priorities through experiences at the U.S. Senate in the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations (SFRC) and Senator Cory Booker’s Office, leading global think tanks based in China and Belgium, international media companies, state and local government, and NGOs promoting equity, economic empowerment, and increased access to education for children in Pakistan.

Outside of her professional experiences, she is involved in organizations advancing greater representation in and accessibility to opportunities in public service, including as a Board Member for both MAPS (as Deputy Outreach Director) and the Department of State’s South Asian American Employee Association (SAAEA), as well as an Advisory Board Member for Leading Women of Tomorrow.

Alisha graduated with honors from American University with bachelor’s degrees in International Studies and Political Science, minor in Chinese, and certificate in Women, Policy, and Political Leadership. She can be reached at policy@mapsnational.org.

Ahmad Maaty currently serves as a Senior Economist with the U.S. Department of Justice, developing Federal regulations for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF). He worked in a similar regulatory capacity at the U.S. Department of Transportation, and U.S. Department of Homeland Security, including as Acting Chief Economist with the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). He also deployed as an Inter-Governmental Affairs Specialist during FEMA emergency responses to disaster declarations in Texas and Puerto Rico.

Previously, Ahmad served as a Franklin Fellow with the U.S. Department of State’s Office of U.S. Foreign Assistance Resources, helping craft State and USAID’s economic growth budget and strategy. He also helped introduce data tools to guide assistance as a founding member of the Country Data Analytics team, liaising with the White House National Security Council on bi-lateral investment opportunities. Ahmad first joined State ten years earlier, helping cover the Middle East portfolio before the United Nations Security Council for the U.S. Mission to the United Nations. 

During the eight year interval in Federal service, Ahmad held roles with the World Bank, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), and the Islamic Development Bank, developing economic growth, poverty reduction, and evaluation programs with fieldwork in over a dozen countries across Sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, and the Middle East. 

A New York City native, he served as President of the Arab Students Association at Pace University in downtown Manhattan during the events of September 11th, 2001, and on the Board of the Muslim Students Association at the George Washington University in Washington DC. Ahmad earned his Masters in Public Administration from Cornell University, where he served as Editor-in-Chief of the Cornell policy journal.