FAANA Board Members 2021-2022

Rafaeel Akbar Chaudhry

2004-2009
Lives in Whitby, Ontario

---

Rafaeel has been a student leader, writer, and knowledge junkie since high school.

He holds a bachelor’s degree in telecommunications engineering from FAST-National University and a master’s degree in business, entrepreneurship and technology from the University of Waterloo. He has many certifications including, digital transformation, data science, project management (PMP), management consultancy, and technical sales.

He is an active volunteer for non-profits since childhood and has served on several key leadership positions in the past two decades including as a president of the prestigious SOFTEC Society for the year 2007-08. In 2005, he founded the first IEEE Women in Engineering (WIE) Affinity Group at FAST-NU Lahore which now has 50 different chapters across Pakistan. He also sits on multiple boards of not-for-profit corporations and educational scholarships.

Professionally, he has founded multiple start-ups before moving to Canada where he currently works as a Group Product Manager for one of the FinTech leaders in the loyalty space.

With a strong interest in music and social work, Rafaeel spends his free time interacting with artists, travelling, and mentoring students and new immigrants to Canada. 

Nauman Sheikh

1992-1994
Lives in Ellicott City, Maryland​

---

​Nauman Sheikh worked on an AI project very early in his career back in 1996 when he built a rule-based Pilot Scheduling system for Northwest Airlines. He has been building and deploying predictive models in operational environments since 2008 when he built and sold Credit Risk Models to banks in 3 continents. In 2013 he undertook a 10+ million device project dealing with IoT, billions of records and Real-Time operational decisions using predictive models. He first used Neural Networks in 2009 to solve a Money Laundering problem which built on his earlier project he had undertaken for US Treasury on Anti-Money Laundering back in 2002. He is a hands-on practitioner and has written a book on implementing AI that covers problem definition, model building, model deployment and overall business adoption of AI. His recent work is focused on Text Mining, Human Machine interface and gaming.

Omer Enaam

1996-1999 (BS) | 2001-2005 (MS)
Lives in Irvine, California

---

Omer is a computer science graduate. He started his career developing ecommerce platforms as a software developer. He is a problem solver and has chosen consulting profession. He addresses complex business and technology issues for his clients by leveraging cloud, analytics and AI technologies. His personal interests include running, skiing, hiking and tennis.  ​

Farah Khurrum

2000-2004
Lives in Seattle, Washington​
​

---

Farah works at Twitter and was previously a Software Engineer at Azure in Microsoft, Finance lead and Treasurer for Pakistani Women in Computing, Board member of Pakistanis at Microsoft , Women in Azure Council Member, and Women Techmakers Ambassador – Seattle.

An advocate of education, diversity and inclusion at work place, and enjoys helping and empowering others. She has been involved with many Non-profit organizations mostly education related, including but not limited to PTSA (Parent Teacher Student Associations), LWSF (School foundations), and Levy and Bonds for LWSD. Worked to establish STEAM programs at school and district level, and helped SD by revamping their website for Bonds.

She tries to excel at every project she takes over. In retrospect she has received many awards for excelling in education, outstanding advocate award and Golden Acorn award from WA State PTA for the local volunteering.

​Naeem Iqbal is a Principal Software Engineer at Infor Hospitality and has been working with Infor since 1999. He has primarily worked on two software products, Infor EAM and Infor Hospitality.

He is a Java enthusiast using Spring Framework and an advocate of Test Driven Development for complex projects. 

Naeem belongs to the first batch of Lahore Campus and likes the outdoors. He bikes and jogs whenever he gets a chance.

---

Naeem Iqbal

1990-1992
Lives in Greenville, South Carolina
​

---