2010 Conference Overview
Theme: “Charting the Landscape”
Saturday October 30, 2010
9 AM to 5 PM (EST)
Hyatt Regency
Two Albany Street,
New Brunswick, NJ – 08901
Tel: +1 732 873 1234
Fax: +1 732 873 1382
Hyatt Hotel is conveniently located 2 blocks from New Brunswick train station. New Brunswick is located on North East Corridor line and a train runs every 15 minutes from New York Penn Station during peak hours and every 30 minutes during offpeak hours. It is only a 50 minute train ride from New York Penn Station.
Interested in sponsoring our event? Check out the Sponsorship Packet for more information.
Speakers
P. Miles Young
CEO, Ogilvy & Mather Worldwide
Miles Young was educated at Bedford School and New College, Oxford. His career in advertising has spanned Lintas, Allen Brady & Marsh and Ogilvy & Mather, which he joined in 1983.
Miles was appointed to the Board of Ogilvy & Mather Advertising in London in 1986 and Client Services Director in 1988. In February 1990, he became Managing Director of Ogilvy & Mather Direct in London. He was a Regional Director of Ogilvy & Mather Direct Europe from 1990 to 1995.
From 1994 to 1995, he had the additional responsibility of setting up and running the IBM account in Europe which had previously been held by some 40 separate agencies. This included setting up a dedicated service hub in Paris for both advertising and direct marketing; and Miles has lectured and written widely on the subject of integrated marketing, a special interest.
In September 1995, he moved to Hong Kong to take up the position of Chairman of Ogilvy & Mather Asia Pacific, and serves on the Board and Executive Committee of Ogilvy & Mather Worldwide. During this period, Ogilvy & Mather grew significantly in size and market share, and was repeatedly acknowledged as “Agency of the Year” by Media magazine.
He represented WPP’s corporate interests in Asia, in addition to his Ogilvy responsibilities.
James A. Kocsi
District Director, U. S. Small Business Administration
James A. Kocsi is the district director of the U.S. Small Business Administration’s (SBA) New Jersey district office located in Newark, NJ. Under his leadership, the New Jersey district office has consistently provided record levels of support to the small business community. In Fiscal Year 2009, the office approved 1,117 loans for $338 million to New Jersey small business owners. The office also provided small disadvantaged companies with federal contracts valued at $108 million under the agency’s 8(a) Business Development program.
Mr. Kocsi is responsible for directing SBA’s efforts to assist the 778,000 small businesses in New Jersey with the agency’s financial and business development programs. He also has oversight responsibilities for eleven Small Business Development Centers administered by Rutgers University, the Women’s Business Center of NJ and nine chapters of SCORE – Counselors to America’s Small Business, a volunteer organization that provides free business counseling.
Steven Pilchak
General Manager, Best Buy
Steven Pilchak is a General Manager for Best Buy in Dearborn, Michigan. Throughout the past ten years, he has served in numerous capacities. As a General Manager, he has been very passionate around the diversity and inclusion of the Muslim culture within his community. Steven’s focus has centered around finding ways to better serve both the Muslim customer and the Muslim community of southeast Michigan, and have led to partnerships with the American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee and the Lebanese American Heritage Club. Additionally, Steven serves on a team focused on business partnerships in the Midwest, and he attended Eastern Michigan University where he studied Marketing and Advertising.
Tariq Farid (Tentative)
Founder & CEO, Edible Arrangements International, Inc.
Tariq launched the first Edible Arrangements® store in 1999 in East Haven, Connecticut. He was inspired by the convergence of three trends: Americans’ growing consumption of fresh fruit, the robust growth in the specialty food market and the increasing amount of money Americans were spending on gifts. Edible Arrangements® was named one of America’s fastest-growing privately held businesses in America by Inc. magazine and one of the top franchise systems in Entrepreneur Magazine’s Franchise 500. Tariq has four pending U.S. patents for proprietary fruit-cutting equipment that he designed.
In February of 2009, Tariq was named “Entrepreneur of the Year” by the International Franchise Association, whose members include more than 1,300 franchise systems, 11,000 franchisees and 500 suppliers. This award is presented to an individual who is building a successful business venture, demonstrates innovative management skills and is active in the community.
In June 2009 Tariq was awarded the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur Of The Year® 2009 Award in the Retail and Consumer Products category in Metro New York. This award recognizes entrepreneurs who are building and leading dynamic, growing businesses and who demonstrate exceptional innovation, financial performance and personal commitment to their businesses and communities.
Adnan Durrani
Chief Halal Officer, American Halal Co. Inc.
Mr. Durrani is currently Chief Halal Officer (CHO) and CEO of American Halal Co, Inc ( www.americanhalal.com) —which markets the Saffron Road brand line of organic and all natural halal cuisine. Saffron Road is the first halal product to be sold nationally in the Whole Foods chain. He is also President of Condor Ventures, Inc. Mr. Durrani is a serial entrepreneur. He was the founder of Vermont Pure Holdings/Crystal Rock Water Co. (now the 2nd largest bottled water company in the Northeast ) as well as being a principal financial partner of Stonyfield Farms Inc, with over $300 million in sales, whose private sale he led to Dannone, SA in 2003. He was also a principal of Delicious Brands, Inc— in which Carl Icahn financially backed Mr.Durrani to bulid Delicious into the 5th largest cookie brand in US.
He is one of the entrepreneurs and venture investors who for the past 25 years promoted social finance as a way to change the way the world does business, being cited by SVN as a leaders of one of “20 Ideas That Changed The Way The World Does Business”. The select list of these inductees by BBMG include: Ben Cohen (Ben & Jerry’s), Gary Hirshberg (Stonyfield Farms), Eileen Fisher, Yvonne Chovinard (Patagonia), Mohammed Younes (Nobel Peace Prize, Grameen Bank), Horst Rechelbacher (Aveda), and Steve Case (AOL, Revolution Ventures). He also served on the Board of Social Venture Network (SVN or www.svn.org ).
Furthermore, Mr. Durrani sits on the Board of the Graduate School of Engineering and Applied Sciences of Columbia University, where he is also Chairman of the Entrepreneurial Advisory Board.. Mr. Durrani received an undergraduate degree in electrical engineering and economics from Columbia University. He is also a Charter Member of the American Institute of Islamic and Arabic Studies. He often lectures on Islam and remains active in facilitating interfaith forums in New York City and Connecticut area synagogues, churches, and mosques. Most recently, he has been invited by the Vatican and Ambassador to the Holy Sees(www.vatican.va ) to be a speaker on Interfaith In Business in October, 2010, at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome, Italy.
Dalia Mogahed
Senior Analyst & Executive Director, Gallup Center for Muslim Studies
Dalia Mogahed is a Senior Analyst and Executive Director of the Gallup Center for Muslim Studies, a nonpartisan research center dedicated to providing data-driven analysis on the views of Muslim populations around the world. With John L. Esposito, Ph.D., she is coauthor of the book Who Speaks for Islam?: What a Billion Muslims Really Think. Dalia was recently appointed to the President Obama’s Advisory Council on Faith Based and Neighborhood Partnerships, where she serves on the Inter-religious dialogue and cooperation task force. Mogahed also serves on the boards of Freedom House and Women in International Security (WIIS). Her analysis has appeared in The Wall Street Journal, Foreign Policy magazine, the Harvard International Review, the Middle East Policy journal, and many other academic and popular journals.
Mogahed is a member of the President Obama’s Advisory Council on Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships. She is a member of Women in International Security, serves on the leadership group of the Project on U.S. Engagement with the Global Muslim Community, and is a member of the Crisis in the Middle East Task Force of the Brookings Institution.
Jack Acree
Executive Vice President, American Halal Co, Inc.
Jack is the Executive Vice President of the American Halal Co, Inc, and is leading the sales, marketing, and strategic launch of its Saffron Road brand. Mr. Acree is an accomplished food executive, having successfully built two of the fastest growing startups in the natural foods business which now deliver well over $50 million in sales – Terra Chips® (Hain Foods) and Alexia Foods® (ConAgra Foods), each were sold to Hain and ConAgra, respectively, at exceptional returns to investors. He brings an aggressive and adaptive approach to Saffron Road’s brand’s marketing and sales efforts due to his extensive experience with both direct customer and broker management for multiple channels of trade, including natural foods supermarkets (both direct and through natural channels), super centers, route service, foodservice and club.
Jack was at Alexia Foods from inception as Director of Sales. His team built Alexia’s sales to over $75 million today with over 26 products. Alexia Food was sold to ConAgra Foods in 2007. While at Alexia in 2002, Jack was able to immediately secure shelf space and for this start-up brand into 5,000 stores – in such top-tier chains as Whole Foods, Publix, Stop & Shop, Shoprite, Shaw’s, Wegmans, and Wal-Mart. At Terra Chips, Jack was part of the original founding member executive team, where he built and scaled five broad channels of distribution for this niche start up: independent routes, gourmet shops natural stores, supermarket chains and food service (hotels, restaurants). Today, Terra Chips is owned by Hain foods and generates over $50 Million in sales.
Joohi Tahir
VP Marketing & Sales, Crescent Foods
Joohi Tahir was born and spent her early childhood in London, England. After immigrating to the US with her family in 1980, she settled and was educated in Boston, MA. Graduating with honors with a degree in Business from Boston University, Joohi pursued extensive coursework concentrating in Marketing. She was the recipient of the esteemed Alfred Baumburg Memorial Scholarship Award and played an active leading role in the founding chapter of the National Business Fraternity, Delta Sigma Pi.
Over the span of her 16 year career, Joohi has had vast exposure in the field of Marketing across a wide variety of industries. Among these, Retail Buying, Strategic Market Planning & Research, Catalog Brand Management, Sales & Sales Training and Customer Loyalty & Retention. From 1993 to 1999, at Spiegel, Inc., known for their catalog expertise at the time, Joohi developed market positioning strategies and led a team approach to always advocate as the voice of the customer. She currently lives in Naperville, IL with her husband and three daughters.
Dr. Mehmood Khan
Sr. Vice President & Chief Scientific Officer, PepsiCo, Inc.
Mehmood Khan, M.D., F.A.C.E., is SVP and Chief Scientific Officer of PepsiCo, Inc., where he is responsible for guiding the company’s long-term research strategy and agenda for business opportunities. He provides global leadership and support to division research and development groups in the areas of enterprise research planning, R&D portfolio management, next generation technologies, nutritional standards, food safety and regulation, and quality assurance.
Prior to joining PepsiCo in 2007, Mehmood served as President of Takeda Global Research & Development Center, Inc (TGRD). In this role, Dr. Khan led all aspects of TGRD’s business, in both its Deerfield and U.K. Offices, including developing new product candidates, conducting post-marketing clinical studies and identifying and developing innovative lifecycle management approaches for marketed drugs. He was formerly Senior Vice President of Medical & Scientific Affairs for Takeda Pharmaceuticals North America (TPNA), Inc.
Nausheena Hussain,
Multicultural Marketing, Best Buy
Nausheena Hussain is a marketing manager focused on developing strategic partnerships targeting the multicultural consumer. Although the focal point of her work is predominately on the Latino customer, she is very passionate around diversity and inclusion efforts especially around the Muslim culture as well as the Muslim consumer. She has recently launched and is Co-chair of the Interfaith Employee Business Network chapter at Best Buy headquarters to enhance the work environment by showcasing how faith plays a role in the employee experience, the customer experience and the communities we serve. In 2004, she helped found the Minnesota Youth Leadership Award, a scholarship program, and served as one of the Board of Directors. Nausheena also helped start her husband’s business in urgent care.
She graduated from the University of Minnesota cum laude in 2003 with her MBA and is pursuing her M.S. in Islamic Studies at the Islamic University of Minnesota. Married, with two young children, she lives in Minneapolis and is on the PTA Board for Al-Amal School.
Mohamed El-Fatatry
Founder & CEO, Muxlim Inc.
World’s top evangelist for the $1 trillion global Muslim consumer market. Visionary entrepreneur and motivational speaker with a background in Media, Technology and Business. One of the world’s “500 Most Influential Muslims” and “Leaders of Tomorrow”.
At 16, Mohamed became the youngest higher-education instructor in the history of the United Arab Emirates by creating and teaching the web development course at the Emirates Institute of Technology. By 21, he founded Muxlim Inc., the world’s largest Muslim lifestyle network reaching people in 190 countries. During his work at Muxlim Inc., he became the first immigrant to receive the President of Finland’s Internationalization award in its 45 year history. The award has never been awarded to a start-up company before and has been won by Nokia 10 years earlier.
Coming from a Computer Science background, he has been called in Finland the “Linus Torvalds” of the Muslim world and has been named the “Egyptian Technology Figure of the Year”. Mohamed is among 200 CEO’s invited by President Obama to the “Presidential Summit on Entrepreneurship” and was named by Georgetown University and the Royal Islamic Strategic Center among the world’s “500 Most Influential Muslims”. Recently, Mohamed became the youngest Business leader named among Chief Executive Magazine’s “Leaders of Tomorrow”.
Tariq Khan
President, Muxlim Inc.
Tariq Khan is a recognized business leader in marketing, branding, segmentation, and diversity arena. Tariq’s work, interviews and articles have been published in several trade and industry publications. He is the founder and President of Global Diversity Marketing, a management consulting firm focused on helping organizations to better understand the changing market place. Tariq is best known for leading the diversity initiatives in the financial services industry and making the business case for diversity.
Tariq has had a distinguished twenty-year career, mostly at global Fortune companies including MetLife, Nationwide, and ING. Tariq has held several senior management roles with the major Fortune companies. In his last position, Tariq was senior vice president and head of market development for ING, where he led ING’s strategy to expand growing emerging markets with over $2.4 billion annual revenue.
Hajj Abdalhamid David Evans
Managing Director & Sr. Analyst, Imarat Consultants
Hajj Abdalhamid David Evans was born in New York and has been widely educated in both the UK and Europe. He accepted Islam in 1978 in Norwich, UK and served and studied under Shaykh Dr. Abdalqadir as-Sufi in the UK and Spain for many years, and assisted in many community-based projects throughout the 1980’s and 90’s.
He has also provided Halal sector consulting services with KasehDia, whose clients included the Malaysian Government with respect to the strategic development of the Halal industry as an integral part of their Global Halal Hub programme, and to position Halal as an engine of growth for the local economy from agriculture through to exports.
Hajj Abdalhamid established Imarat Consultants Sdn Bhd in 2006 to provide consulting services and domain expertise to clients outside Malaysia, and left KasehDia in April 2007 to further develop the international consulting projects of Imarat Consultants.
Bami Bastani
Chairman and CEO, B2 Global Consulting, LLC
Dr. Bami Bastani is the Chairman and CEO of B2 Global Consulting, LLC. focusing on corporate transformation. He is the former President and CEO of ANADIGICS Inc., listed on NASDAQ, where he led the company for a decade (1998-2008). Currently, Dr. Bastani serves on Boards of Directors for several public and private companies.
Dr. Bastani draws his expertise from his many years at top-level positions in many knowledge based organizations and a successful track record of implementing, transforming and managing innovation at several top high-tech companies, including Intel, National Semiconductor, Fujitsu Microelectronics and ANADIGICS. He has been a driving force in innovation in the fast moving high-tech field.
Dr. Bastani’s recognitions include American Electronics Association (AeA) NJ & PA 2007 High Tech CEO Hall of Fame; ANADIGICS NJ Electronic Company Of The Year 2007 by New Jersey Technology Council; opening the NASDAQ Stock Market in 2007 and 2000 respectively; featured twice in real time interviews on CNBC’s Power Lunch; National Semiconductor Corporation’s Business Excellence Award, Intel Corporation’s Individual Achievement Award, The Ohio State University Distinguished Alumni Award, Shafstall Award, University Fellow; University of Arkansas Distinguished Alumni and Sr. Scholar Awards.
Dr. Bastani, has a, and PhD (1980) in Solid State Electronics and MSEE (1977) from The Ohio State University and a BSEE form the University of Arkansas (1976). Dr. Bastani holds three U.S. Patents and several publications in semiconductor technology.
Farah Ahmed
Co-Founder, South Asians in Media Marketing and Entertainment
The Personal Care Products Council (formerly the Cosmetics Toiletry and Fragrance Association) is comprised of over 600 member companies including L’Oreal, Estee Lauder, Procter & Gamble, Unilever, Johnson & Johnson, and others. On behalf of Council members, Farah develops strategy and represents the industry on issues pertaining to the advertising and marketing of cosmetics in the U.S. and foreign markets. She leads the industry’s Sunscreen, Anti-aging, and Organic/Natural/Green Task Forces. Most recently, ISO (Organization for International Standardization) appointed Farah Convenor of the Cosmetic Marketing Group. She is a recognized expert in the aforementioned matters and has been interviewed by a number of news sources including the New York Times, the Washington Post, Oprah Magazine, Politico, WebMD, CBS News, ABC News, Womens Wear Daily and several cosmetic industry trade publications. Farah is a graduate of the University of Virginia, School of Law. Farah is also a Co-Founder and Board Member of SAMMA (South Asians in Media Marketing and Entertainment).
