Unitas Communications

Muddassar Ahmed is founding Chief Executive of Unitas Communications Ltd, where he has led on projects with the United Nations, US State Department, the UK Foreign Office, the Arab League, Barclays Wealth, Mosaic, the Edmond de Rothschild Foundation, the UK National Health Service (NHS) and the British Council. Muddassar is also founding Chairman of The Concordia Forum, a global think tank for transatlantic relations which runs an annual leaders’ retreat.

In 2010, Muddassar founded the John Adams Society (JAS), where he is currently Chair. JAS is the official alumni association for US State Department exchange program participants in England, Scotland and Wales. Alumni include former British prime ministers Margaret Thatcher, Tony Blair and Gordon Brown as well leading members of the present government and various leaders from the corporate, media, political and community organisations. Additionally, he serves as an elected director on ENAM, the European Network of American Alumni Associations, which caters for participants of US Government exchange programs across Europe. Muddassar is also a NATO Young Atlanticist Fellow for 2012/13, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.

Muddassar is founding chair of the Hikmah Club, an exclusive bimonthly dining club for thought leaders and professionals from the political, media and the corporate worlds, whose sponsors include State Street Bank, PWC, Clifford Chance, HSBC, Credit Suisse, KPMG, Barclays Wealth and Ernst & Young. He is a founding board member of CEDAR, a pan-European network of Muslim professionals, where he chairs the Media Committee. He also holds a range of board positions at a number of leading UK charities, including the Prince’s Youth Business International, an official charity of the Prince of Wales, The Adab Trust, The British Pakistan Foundation, and The Newham Public Affairs Committee.

Previously, Muddassar worked as a TV producer and presenter for the BBC, Channel 4 and Islam Channel Productions.  His television credits include Operation Muslim Vote (Carbon Media/Channel 4, 2005), The Retreat (Tiger Aspect/BBC 2, 2006), The Cult of the Suicide Bomber (Many Rivers Films, Channel 4, 2007), Seven Wonders of the Muslim World (Crescent Films/Channel 4, 2008), and Muslim and Looking for Love (Crescent Films/Channel 4, 2009). Between 2006 and 2008, he was the lead presenter for Islam’s Channel flagship prime-time weekly current affairs show Politics & Beyond. Prior to this, Muddassar worked as corporate liaison manager for UK celebrity hypnotist Paul McKenna, where he managed a team of 10 individuals working to secure corporate support for Paul’s work.

Muddassar has a long background of work in the heart of British Muslim communities. He served as spokesperson/campaigns officer for the Alliance of Mosques in East London, where he helped coordinate local government policy across 50 mosques in the East London area. Additionally, he was co-founding presenter on the popular East London Radio Station ‘Radio Ummah’, where he presented a twice weekly current affairs slot and served as head of advertising. He has been a Steering Group member of the Prince of Wales’ charity Mosaic, The Interfaith Alliance in Newham, and the founding General Secretary of MLM UK.

Muddassar is a regular commentator on international and public affairs, particularly on issues concerning the interface between the Western and Islamic worlds. He has written and commented for BBC Newsnight, BBC London, Sky News, CNN, The Times, The Sun, The Telegraph, The Huffington Post, Al-Arabiya, and the Jewish Chronicle.

International Liaison Director: Professor Joseph E Connolly

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Professor Joseph E Connolly is distinguished Professor of Finance and Management at The Ecole Nationale des Ponts et Chausees in Paris. Prior to that he was the Willard Brown Distinguished Professor of Global and Islamic Finance at the American University In Cairo. He is an Advisor to the Islamic Finance Centre at the Swiss Banking Institute in Zurich and to the Institute of Islamic Banking and Insurance In London. He is also a Trustee of Richmond University in London. He serves as the US Commissioner for the Bilateral UK-US Fulbright Commission.

An MBA graduate of Harvard University’s business school and, earlier, Cornell, Professor Connolly was for many years an Executive Director and Head at UBS for Private Banking Research and a Managing Director for Global Finance Research at Citibank where he first formatted plans for developing Islamic Finance product offerings in New York, Zurich and London. He has been instrumental is setting up Islamic banking subsidiaries, working with Shariah scholars to understand capital markets and treasury products, and developing a context for rating sukuk and other Islamic obligations. He has published prolific articles about finance.

Chief Media Officer: Zahed Amanullah

Zahed Amanullah is Chief Media Officer at Unitas Communications, responsible for the organisation’s overall media strategy, and Managing Director of the Concordia Forum, an annual leaders retreat based in Italy. He has recently been appointed Visiting Programme Director for Wilton Park, an Executive Agency of the UK Foreign Office. He is the former Executive Editor of altmuslim.com, the largest Muslim news website in the United States and a former Director of American Halal, Inc., a pioneering halal food company in the US. He comments regularly on Muslim communities and consumers in national and international media and conferences worldwide. His writings and analysis have been featured in a wide variety of media outlets, including BBC TV and radio, the Guardian (UK), The National (UAE), The Daily Star (Lebanon), CNN International, Al Jazeera, Press TV and many others.

He is a founding member of AMILA, a San Francisco Bay Area-based Muslim community organization, and a founding board member of CEDAR, a pan-European organization of Muslim professionals. Zahed has also served as an advisor to a variety of organisations including Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society, the US State Department, Britain’s Home Office, the World Halal Forum, and the Radical Middle Way on matters dealing with extremism, integration, technology, commerce, and media. Born and raised in Southern California, he is a graduate of the University of California, Berkeley.

He is the author of five books on international security and foreign policy issues. In 2003, he was a finalist for the Naples Prize, Italy’s most prestigious literary award, and in 2010 he won the annual international Routledge-GCP&S Essay Prize. His research has also been used by the 9/11 Commission; the US Army Air University’s ‘Causes of War’ collection (2007); the UK Ministry of Defence’s Joint Services Command & Staff College Research Guide on Counter-Terrorism and the GWOT (2008); and Chatham House’s Middle East Programme.

Polling Associate: Alnoor Samji