TCF-USA Board of Directors
The Citizens Foundation, USA (TCF-USA) is a professionally managed non-profit organization that funds schools and educational programs for underprivileged children in Pakistan. The schools are designed, built and operated by The Citizens Foundation, one of Pakistan’s largest non-profit organizations in education.
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Zarrar Sehgal, President (New York)
Zarrar Sehgal is an attorney and received his JD from Georgetown University Law Center and his undergraduate degree from Boston University. He is a partner in Clifford Chance’s US Finance and Restructuring Group and Co-Head of the Asset Finance Practice. Mr. Sehgal is also head of Clifford Chance's Global Transport & Logistics sector group. He has extensive experience representing underwriters, lenders, lessors, and governmental agencies in a wide variety of asset finance transactions.
Zarrar was named as a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum. He was also recognized by Chambers USA in 2006, 2007, 2008 and 2009.
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Danish Ismail, Treasurer (Chicago)
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Qasim Hanafi, Secretary (New York)
Qasim Hanafi is a Senior Vice President/Controller at a division of Sterling National Bank. Qasim is a Chartered Accountant and has held management positions with DCD Finance Inc., PIA Investments Ltd., and as a senior auditor at KPMG affiliate, Taseer, Hadi, Khalid & Co. He started his professional career in 1984 after receiving Bachelor of Commerce degree from Karachi University. Mr. Hanafi lives in New Jersey with his wife and two children.
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Danial Noorani, Director & CEO (Chicago)
Danial Noorani is the founder of TCF-USA and served as President prior to being appointed as the CEO to manage the organization on a full time basis. He is also a member of the Board and past President of ‘Apna Ghar’ (Our Home), a twenty year old domestic violence agency in Chicago.
As an executive with AT&T for 26 years, Danial took a leading role in the efforts to introduce competition in the Telecommunications industry. He co-chaired the Illinois Commerce Commission workshop that set the guidelines for the rest of the country and represented AT&T at the FCC and several state utility commissions.
Danial has an MBA from Western Illinois University and a Bachelor degree in commerce and economics from the University of Karachi. Danial and his wife Karen have three children and live in Roselle, Illinois.
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Adnan Asar, Director (San Francisco)
After more than 15 years of experience in Silicon Valley, Adnan has lived through the rise of the Internet, the roaring nineties and the dot com bust! But throughout his career, Adnan has been most passionate about solving new problems with state-of-the-art software solutions. Prior to joining Tiny Prints as VP Engineering, he managed the definition and development of community and social platform at Yahoo! Prior to Yahoo!, Adnan held senior positions at Oracle, where he was responsible for Oracle Application Server enterprise management tools. At Keynote Systems, where he was one of the initial team members at the company, Adnan helped transform it into a worldwide leader in Internet performance management. In addition, Adnan was bit by the entrepreneurial bug and co-founded and served as the CEO of Equbits Inc., a start-up that built predictive modeling and analytics software for major Fortune 500 pharmaceutical companies.
Adnan holds a Master of Science degree in Computer Science from San Francisco State University, and a Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical Engineering & Computer Science from University of California, Berkeley. He enjoys Thai food and salsa dancing and took modern dance back in college.
Adnan is married to Dina and they have two children.
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Azher Khan, Director (Indianapolis)
A native of Karachi, Pakistan, Azher Khan came to the United States in 1972. He earned a Bachelor’s degree in International Relations from the University of Mankato in Minnesota in 1975 and a Master’s degree in Public Administration from the American University in Washington, DC in 1979. He became a U.S. citizen in 1985.
Azher is President of Calderon Textiles Inc., which was formed in 1983 in Indianapolis.
Azher has served as Treasurer at Al-Fajr Masjid for the past 24 years. He is also Treasurer of the Muslim Alliance of Indiana and President of Seeds of Learning, a not-for-profit organization dedicated to building goodwill, friendship, peace and tolerance between the peoples and cultures of Pakistan and America through education. Seeds of Learning raises funds for the construction and continued operations of the Campus of Hope, a TCF primary school in Bai Bala, Pakistan.
Azher and his wife, Pinky, have three children.
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Mujtaba Hamid , Director (Seattle)
Mujtaba Hamid is currently Director of Technical Strategy at Microsoft and is responsible for the executive relationship between Microsoft and Intel. Previously, he has held Corporate Strategy, Marketing and Engineering leadership roles at Microsoft, Xilinx and Rockwell Semiconductor Systems. Mujtaba has been involved with TCF-USA since 2006 and also serves as an advisor to the Marketing committee. Within the local community, Mujtaba is an active supporter of Childhaven, an early childhood therapeutic care non-profit in Seattle and has coordinated disaster relief drives for Swat refugees in 2009 and Pakistan Flood Relief in 2010. Mujtaba holds a BS in Electrical Engineering with a minor in International Relations from Purdue University, MBA from the University of Colorado and MS in Supply Chain Management from Penn State University. Mujtaba and his wife, Fauzia, have two girls and they reside in Redmond, WA.
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Fahad Najam, Director (New York)
Fahad Najam is a technology executive with an expertise in Corporate Strategy and Venture Initiation. He has worked with AT&T and Bell Labs and currently advises clients from startups to tech-focused venture funds. Fahad is a long-time advocate for education reforms in Pakistan and passionately believes in the people and the work of The Citizens Foundation. Fahad holds undergraduate degrees in Engineering from New York University and is currently a MBA/MPA joint degree candidate at The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania and Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. Fahad is happily married and enjoys traveling the world. He recently led a Wharton expedition to Polar Region of Antarctica.
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Barbara Janes, Director (Chicago)
Barbara Janes was a Peace Corps Volunteer in Peshawar from 1961-63. In the early 2000s her Returned Peace Corps group, Friends of Pakistan USA, decided it wanted to do something for girls' education in Pakistan. During 2007 she traveled to Pakistan and did teacher training workshops for TCF teachers in Karachi and Lahore. In 2009, Barbara and two other former Peace Corps volunteers, Nancy Parlin and Leslie Mass worked with TCF to train teachers and help run summer science camps.
Barbara's group has been raising funds to provide scholarships for ten girls to attend TCF Phanghali Girls High Schol outside Lahore. They are in the process of raising $10,000 to rehabilitate one of the TCF schools damaged during the 2010 floods. Friends of Pakistan USA has also raised money for earthquake relief in 2005 and flood relief in 2010.
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Alia Faiz, Director (Dallas)
Alia Faiz is the President & CEO of Medfolio Inc, a Health IT company in Dallas, TX. She is a seasoned Mgmt and IT Consultant with expertise in Business Strategy, Processes re-engineering, Program Mgmt and IT Risk Mgmt working for big 5 consulting corporations like KPMG LLP. Over the past decade, she has played an instrumental role in defining and establishing Solution Delivery Methodologies and forming Strategic Vendor and Service Provider alliances with multimillion-dollar budget responsibilities for Fortune 100 companies like AT&T, Texas Instruments, Citigroup & Alcatel.
Alia has played a key role in helping establish ‘The Charlie Wilson Chair’ in Pakistan Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. This is the first ever alumni chair in Pakistan Studies at any US college or university. She has been an advisor to the ‘Jarvis Christian College Call Center Project’ that focuses on providing on-campus employment and training opportunities to the African American community in Hawkins, Texas. She has also played a key role in establishing the DFW local chapter of APWA (All Pakistan Women Association).
She holds a bachelors degree in Electrical Engineering, an MBA in MIS from University of Texas at Dallas and numerous certifications.
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Advisors to the Board
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Amjad Noorani (San Francisco)
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Shimmi Kidwai (Washington, DC)
The importance of charitable service was instilled in Shimmi Kidwai at an early age by her parents. She has supported and raised funds for a number of American and Pakistani charities. Prior to the formation of TCF-USA, Shimmi offered valuable assistance in raising funds across the US.
For the past twelve years, Shimmi has focused a great deal of her time and resources to assist TCF. Her dedication to TCF stems from her belief that quality education for the poor is the best solution for Pakistan’s many challenges.
Shimmi is on the Board of Friends of Pakistan Club (FOP) and American Pakistani Women’s Association (APWA); both non-profit charitable organizations recently celebrated their 50th anniversary. Shimmi has served on the Board of Directors of TCF-USA and continues to serve on the Advisory Council. She is an avid TCF supporter in the Washington, DC area where she initiated a Chapter.
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Uneza Akhtar, General Manager (Chicago)
Uneza Akhtar joined TCF-USA in June 2006 and manages its operations, including donor and project management, and facilitating fundraising efforts for US chapters. She also works with volunteers on the Marketing Committee.
Uneza was editor for The Review, a weekly magazinefor Dawn, Pakistan's leading newspaper where she led a staff team and supervised an internship program for six years. She has also served for three years as Development Grants Associate for Apna Ghar in Chicago, a domestic violence agency, and as editor and researcher for a development and design firm.
Uneza is from Mumbai, India, and went to Elphinstone College. She received her Bachelor of Arts in Literature from the University of Bombay. She is deeply interested in human rights issues and the arts.
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Our Mission
Our mission is to support the building of a civil society in Pakistan by providing quality education to underprivileged children, promoting gender equality, and advocating for reform of public education.
Volunteer Driven
The Citizens Foundation, USA is a professionally managed tax-exempt charity, with a support network of volunteer chapters across the USA.
We are a volunteer driven organization with opportunities for leadership at the local chapter and at the national level.
Leadership Opportunities
The Board of Directors sets the vision for a sustainable organization and is also responsible for oversight of operational efficiency and financial transparency.
In contrast, an Advisory Council comprises of volunteers who are invited to serve in this capacity by the Board of Directors.
Local or regional chapters operate under the leadership of a core group of coordinators, or an Executive Committee.
To explore the right leadership opportunity for you, please contact our CEO, Danial Noorani, via email at – Danial.Noorani@tcfusa.org.
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