Featuring the most influential Muslim leaders in business across the world

Ahmad Abonamah

CFO of the Cleveland Cavaliers

  • Ahmed A. Abonamah is an accomplished finance and legal expert with extensive experience spanning both the public and private sectors. He currently serves as Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer for Rock Entertainment Group and the NBA's Cleveland Cavaliers, where he oversees all financial operations of the franchise and various sports and entertainment brands.

    Ahmed earned his Bachelor of Arts degree in political science from the University of Dayton and his Juris Doctor, cum laude, from Case Western Reserve University School of Law.

    Early in his career, Ahmed served as a public finance attorney at Squire Patton Boggs, serving as bond counsel on general obligation financings, revenue bond issues, and conduit bond issues. In 2016, Ahmed joined the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), where he spent six years in progressively senior roles, including as Deputy Director of the Office of Municipal Securities and, ultimately, as Director of the Office of Credit Ratings, leading critical regulatory initiatives in the municipal securities and credit ratings markets.

    In February 2022, Ahmed joined Mayor Justin Bibb's administration as Chief Financial Officer and Director of Finance for the City of Cleveland. He managed over 300 professionals and oversaw the city's budgets, achieving bond rating upgrades from both Moody's and Fitch, and played a key leadership role in the Administration’s most critical priorities.

    Outside of work, Ahmed serves on the Board of Directors of the Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board, Archbishop Hoban High School, and the Boys and Girls Club of Northeast Ohio; and on the Audit Committee of Accountability Counsel. He resides in Cleveland’s Ohio City neighborhood with his wife and three children.

Sumaiya Balbale

Ex-COO of Sequoia Capital

  • Sumaiya Balbale currently serves on the Board of Directors of Shake Shack (SHAK). She is an experienced, multi-functional startup to scale up operator, with a proven track record and passion for building and leading businesses.

    Previously, Sumaiya was COO & Operating Partner at Sequoia Capital where she led the GTM platform team for the firm. In her role, she oversaw the creation and operations of Arc, Sequoia's seed stage sourcing and company building program, led Talent, Marketing, Communications, Partnerships, Scouts, IR and more. She also has been a guest lecturer for Stanford’s dydx program since 2023.

Mamoon Hamid

Partner with Kleiner Perkins

  • Mamoon Hamid is the Managing Partner at Kleiner Perkins, where he leads the firm and backs founders building the next generation of transformative technology companies. Over the past two decades, he has been an early investor in and served on the boards of category-defining companies including Figma, Slack, Rippling, Glean, and Box.

    He began his career as an engineer at Xilinx, a Kleiner Perkins-backed company, before moving into venture capital in 2005 at U.S. Venture Partners, where he became a Partner. In 2011, he co-founded Social Capital, and in 2017, he joined Kleiner Perkins to lead its next generation.

    Mamoon grew up in Frankfurt, Germany and moved to the United States to attend Purdue University, earning a BS in Electrical and Computer Engineering. He also holds an MS from Stanford University and an MBA from Harvard Business School.

Amjad Masad

Founder/CEO of Replit

  • Amjad Masad is a Jordanian American entrepreneur and engineer. He founded Replit, a cloud-based AI-powered software development platform, and one of the fastest-growing developer communities in the world. Prior to his role at Replit, Amjad worked at Facebook, where he led the JavaScript infrastructure team and contributed to popular open-source developer tools. Additionally, he played a key role as a founding engineer at Codecademy, a prominent online coding school.

Noorain Khan

Chief Innovation Officer, Ford Foundation & National President, Girl Scouts of the USA

  • Noorain Khan is a dynamic leader, executive, and philanthropic strategist who brings a powerful blend of acumen and empathy to her work across civil rights, law, policy, women’s leadership, and the arts. Over her career, she has propelled initiatives that expand opportunities, shape culture, and catalyze positive change.

    Noorain is Chief Innovation Officer of the Ford Foundation, where she drives Ford's innovation strategy and commitment to accelerating the foundation and social sector’s impact. She returned to Ford after serving as a philanthropic strategist for private clients and as a Senior Advisor at the investment firm XN.

    Noorain previously spent nearly a decade at the Ford Foundation, where she built and led the first-ever discretionary program team under President Darren Walker. She also launched Ford’s work in disability rights, growing it into the largest private funder of disability rights in the world. Noorain co-founded and incubated pioneering sector-wide efforts such as the Disability & Philanthropy Forum and the Disability Inclusion Fund. Noorain also helped spearhead Ford’s historic $1 billion social bond effort during the COVID-19 crisis. and she is the subject of a Harvard Law School case study on public sector leadership. In 2023, Noorain was elected the National President of Girl Scouts of the USA, where she presides over 1.8 million members and the National Board of Directors and has led historic efforts in strategy, transformation, governance, sustainable revenue, and inclusion and belonging She earned a JD from Yale Law School as a PD Soros Fellow, an MPhil in Migration Studies from Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar and a BA from Rice University. Noorain began her career as an attorney at Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz in New York and was previously a Senior Policy Advisor at the White House and Chief of Staff at Teach for All. She has served on the boards of the Association of American Rhodes Scholars and Pillars Fund, and she is the recipient of the George Parkin Service Award for outstanding contributions to the Rhodes Trust. Her monthly Substack, Mission Critical, about purpose-led professions reaches over 20,000 people. She lives with her husband and two children in Brooklyn, NY.

Chris Blauvelt

Founder/CEO of LaunchGood

  • Chris Blauvelt is a passionate Muslim American entrepreneur committed to building up the global Muslim community to reach its full potential. Chris is the CEO & founder of LaunchGood.com, the world’s largest faith-inspired crowdfunding platform and in 10 years LaunchGood has raised over half a billion dollars across 160 countries from 2.4+ million donors. He’s also launched GMW, a global convening body for Muslim changemakers, and PayGood, an ethical alternative to Stripe and PayPal. Chris lives in Michigan with his Lebanese-American wife and their 4 young kids.

Mona Siddiqui

Senior VP at Highmark Health

  • Dr. Mona Siddiqui is the current Senior Vice President for Home and Community Services at Highmark Health. Her career highlights her passion for building high performing teams to solve critical business problems with velocity that result in business transformation and drive enterprise value. Her experience across the healthcare ecosystem, including health systems, payers, technology and the federal government, gives her a unique perspective in successfully leading transformation and change management in complex organizations.

    She has served as the SVP of Clinical Operations at Humana, as the Chief Data Officer at the Department of Health and Human Services, and as the first healthcare hire for the White House Social and Behavioral Sciences Team.

    Dr. Siddiqui has a medical degree from Johns Hopkins, a degree in Quantitative Methods from Harvard and in Management/Engineering from Stanford.

Ali Akbar

VP of Product & Digital at Grainger

  • Ali Akbar is VP, Product, Portfolio, and Digital Strategy at W. W. Grainger, a leading industrial supplies distributor. As part of his responsibilities, Ali currently leads development of Generative AI solutions Grainger is building. Ali previously led Strategy and Analytics for the company. Prior to joining Grainger, Ali spent 12 years at Boston Consulting Group, where he was a Partner and Managing Director working across Industrials and Medical Technology. His early career roles were in data science and analytics.

    Ali earned his MBA from the Kellogg School of Management and BA in Mathematics at the University of Pennsylvania. Ali grew up in a small town in Pennsylvania. Outside of work, Ali serves on the Board of the YMCA of Metropolitan Chicago and is based in the North Chicago suburbs. Ali and his wife, Nilofer, have two children aged 10 and 8.

Rudwan Azmeh

Founder of NoorQuest Capital

  • Rudwan Azmeh is the Co-Founder and Managing Partner of NoorQuest Capital, a private investment firm pioneering sharia compliant private equity through the acquisition and growth of essential service businesses across the U.S. He also serves as President of Skyward Building Services, a rapidly expanding facility services company operating across multiple states. Previously, Rudwan was with McKinsey & Company, where he advised Fortune 500 firms and high-growth ventures on strategy and transformation. His career spans engineering, entrepreneurship, and private equity, unified by a commitment to building enduring, values-driven businesses that uplift communities and create meaningful economic opportunity. 

More speakers to be announced soon!

Safeer Mohiuddin

Co-Founder of Guardrails AI

  • Safeer Mohiuddin is a technology and finance entrepreneur who has founded several debt-free investment funds. He’s the co-founder of Neeyah for co-investing in owner-occupied homes at scale and Souq Capital for working capital to fund inventory and service contracts. Safeer is also the author of muslim.finance and serves on several non-profit endowment boards.

Nasser Chanda

CEO of Accounting Seed

  • Nasser Chanda is the CEO of Accounting Seed, an accounting platform built natively on Salesforce. He previously served as CEO of Paymerang, a FinTech company acquired for $475 million in 2024. Under his leadership, Paymerang grew revenue 1,500% over eight years, earned consecutive Top Workplace and Inc. 5000 awards, fostered a strong values-driven culture where employees were proud and joyful in their work, and created hundreds of jobs. Nasser is a strong advocate for the positive impact American Muslims can bring to society through entrepreneurship, hard work, and principled leadership.

Ira Renfrew

Co-Founder of Familiar Machines & Magic

  • Ira Renfrew (HBS MBA'14) is co-founder and Chief People & Product Officer at Familiar Machines & Magic. He is passionate about creating a world full of robots that make a positive impact. For the last decade, Ira has been leading product development teams at iRobot, Amazon, and Outrider to build new robotic products and develop new lines of business. Ira lives in the Boston area with his wife and two daughters; together they enjoy great coffee, the outdoors, and travel.

Qasar Younis

Founder/CEO of Applied Intuition

  • Qasar Younis is a dynamic entrepreneur and seasoned leader in the automotive and tech industries. As the Founder and CEO of Applied Intuition, he drives innovation in the motor vehicles sector, leveraging his extensive experience from previous roles at Google and Y Combinator. With a strong technical background in engineering and product management, Qasar has successfully launched products that serve millions of users globally.

    Qasar holds an MBA from Harvard Business School and a degree in Mechanical Engineering from Kettering University. His diverse background includes both corporate and startup environments, showcasing his adaptability and commitment to fostering new ideas. He is also an advocate for early-stage company funding and leadership development, making significant contributions to the entrepreneurial ecosystem.