This section provides a brief description of my professional career which spans over a decade and multiple sectors ranging from Software Development to Social Development; specific details on my assignments are organized in “profession – i work” section of my web profile. My resume is also available here. Please don’t hesitate to contact me for any matter.

I feel so fortunate to always have my passion and profession so perfectly aligned. In all my work, I had freedom to think innovatively and had all the support to design & implement the new processes & systems. So despite the apparent heterogeneity of sectors and functions, I believe that these experiences have strengthened me to INNOVATE – the one common trait I’d wish to be present in my future endeavors. And I further wish to put this Innovation to use for promotion of Common Good.

Career Highlights

• Over 10 years of professional experience in leadership and management positions in diverse sectors of education, agriculture, finance and information technology etc.
• Track record of developing processes & systems, and initiating programs on quality audit & improvement, performance benchmarking, developing and monitoring KPIs etc.
• Mastery in using information technology and computer solutions to optimize operations
• Interpersonal and people management skills: coordinated between cross cultural, geographically separated teams
• Specialized international trainings in Leadership and Monitoring & Evaluation
• Demonstrated skills in launching and scaling up the new businesses/projects  by leading the fronts of strategic planning and operations

Career Story

Computers had just been introduced in my country when I reached the age of making a career choice. And this magic box offered almost everything  that my Bob – The Builder nature needed to feel convinced. I secured admission to then Pakistan’s best Computer Science institute – FAST-Institute of Computer Sciences (FAST-NUCES now) for my 4-year BS program.  I have seen the best and the worst times for computer professionals – unfortunately the best days were those when I was still in the school. My graduation, 9/11 and IT bubble burst are marked closely on the calendars. Luckily it didn’t hurt me much and, after a hop or two, I joined founding team of a tech start-up and, over next six years, led it from concept to commercialization stage. In this period, besides the core software development, I worked in project management, quality control/quality assurance, control systems/industrial automation, and sales & marketing.

Meanwhile, with all this experience/exposure, I had developed an interest in things above and beyond computers – systems of men & money, leadership, and social development etc. I attended LUMS – again the country’s best – for 2-year MBA program. During the MBA, I did short-term mandatory consulting for different institutes in development sector (micro-finance, micro-enterprise development, policy). My graduation and global economic melt down fell in the same year, again. I resorted to strategy/product management for tech sector till I got my big break into the development sector.

Acumen Fund’s Global Fellowship provided a year long live-in experience of an innovative approach towards social development   by building and leading for-profit social enterprises. After intensive training at Acumen HQ in NY, USA, I worked with a Pakistan based social business to expand their operations, improve supply chain, and design marketing/out-reach strategy to promote a low cost, high efficiency irrigation system among the smallholder farmers of Pakistan.

Land O’Lakes, Inc. International Development Division is applying the conventional model of social development in its USDA/USAID funded projects including the ‘Food for Education’ program (2010-2013) in Pakistan. It is challenging and interesting to manage interaction with community, govt. departments, and other mostly resources starved stakeholders to sustain impacts of such resource-heavy interventions.

My life is living example of Steve Job’s ‘dots connect only looking backward‘ speech. I was once passionate about computers and writing software – and this passion has helped me in every job that I have done. Most of my work has been about automating business processes and/or supporting data-based decision making through computers – the solution have ranged from data models and pivot reports in MS-Excel to complex queries on mySQL and data analysis in Tableau. The academics and professional experience have given me good understanding of machines (computers), money (finances), methods (processes) and men (leadership) – and I take every opportunity to put machines to execute methods and thus save the men time, energy and money to spend on better things.