Members Profiles
Iqbal Wahhab OBE
Iqbal Wahhab was born in Bangladesh and came to Britain at the age of eight months.
He was educated in London and is a graduate of the London School of Economics.
He left his early media career to launch the multi award winning Cinnamon Club in 2001 - a restaurant and bar aimed to change the way we view Indian dining. In 2003 he co-authored The Cinnamon Club Cookbook and in 2005 opened Roast, a restaurant and bar in Borough Market celebrating the best of British cooking with the best of seasonal British produce.
He works closely with The Prince's Trust, taking children from under-privileged schools in south east London and spending half days with them at Roast and taking them on food education programmes around Borough Market.
As chair of EMAG he sits on the Ethnic Minority Employment Task Force.
Other commitments include:
Patron: Concern Worldwide
Ambassador roles: Rivington Place Advisor; The Delfina Foundation
Board Memberships: The Prince's Trust; Mosaic; Race for Opportunity –
Business in the Community; Bright Ideas Trust; Business Leaders Advisory Group – London
Development Agency
Awards: Businessman of the Year 2008, The Drinks Business; Honorary
Doctorate in Business Administration by the University of East London (2007)
Dr Husna Ahmad
Dr. Husna Ahmad is the CEO of the Faith Regen Foundation. With a PhD in Environmental Law from the School of Oriental and African Studies at London University, Dr. Husna Ahmad has held the role of Deputy Chief Executive of the Forum against Islamophobia and Racism and was a Principal Officer in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. She sits on the Department for Works and Pensions' Ethnic Minority Advisory Group (EMAG) and is also on the Community Development Forum of the London Health Commission. Dr. Ahmad has been appointed co-chair of the National Council of Faiths and Beliefs in Further Education, a national independent inter-faith charity working with the learning and skills sector, faith and local communities and national and local faith/belief based groups. She was also a member of a Ministerial Working Group on Child Poverty in London in 2008. She is a national and international speaker on faith and regeneration, peace building and women's issues. Most recently she has spoken at a Peace Conference in Sri Lanka, been part of a delegation invited by the Kuwaiti government and a member of an FCO delegation to Iran. She is married with 6 children.
Tanzeem Ahmed
Tanzeem Ahmed is currently employed as the Director of Olmec, which is a charitable company that works with community organisations and individuals in disadvantaged neighbourhoods. Olmec designs and delivers innovative projects that act as catalysts for change providing capacity building, training and employment services to socially excluded communities. One of the main programmes set up by Tanzeem is Solid Foundations. This programme supports refugees and social housing residents back into work.
Tanzeem has 22 years experience of working in the voluntary sector. She has served on committees of several voluntary sector agencies and until last September was a Board member of the General Social Care Council. She has vast experience as a researcher and consultant in areas of mental health, health, housing, regeneration and organisational capacity building with a particular focus on black minority ethnic communities.
Her experience includes being the Chief Officer of a leading BME national voluntary organisation. Her background is as a psychologist and she has worked in the black mental health field for several years. She has managed several pieces of community led research in this field, with a main focus on South Asian communities. The research projects have led to popular publications which include; Illness or Distress? Alternative Models of Mental Health and A Cry for Change- An Asian perspective on Developing Quality Mental Health Care. She has assisted in setting up projects working for BME communities in mental health. She was selected as a consultant to develop a strategy for setting up the Asian Services as part of the ( then) North Birmingham Mental Health Trust. The service went on to receive several awards and was a beacon of good practice in the field.
Tunde Banjoko OBE
Tunde is the Chief Executive of Local Employment Access Projects (LEAP), a London-based, BME-led charity that has helped over 4000 unemployed people into employment, trained thousands more and has been held as an example of good practice in a number of government and other publications. He was the lead designer of a career-planning and employability training programme that is being used by Skills Development Scotland, in schools and careers offices across Scotland.
Tunde brought the powerful STRIVE scheme to the UK, which is an empowerment programme that uses employment as the vehicle, and tackles some of the underlying reasons of why people cannot find and keep work. He regularly gives presentations on one of the London Business School's leadership programmes and has done the same on a PwC programme for their emerging leaders.
Tunde is involved in mentoring black schoolchildren and is passionate about race equality issues. He has an MSc in Urban Regeneration from UCL. He was a member of the government's Children and Young People's Unit's external advisory board and was a member of the National Employment Panel's Minority Ethnic Group. He is currently Chair of the Ethnic Minority Employment Task procurement project group. He was recognised as a "Man of Merit", for community work, in September 2002 and in the same year received recognition from the Mayor of London for services to the city. Tunde was awarded an OBE in the 2008 Queen's Birthday Honours List and is featured in the Independent on Sunday's 2009 Happy List.
Rokhsana Fiaz OBE
Rokhsana Fiaz is a founding director of The Change Institute, a research, organisational development and strategic communications consultancy specialising in race, faith and identity. She has over 15 years high-level experience in public policy, communications and community engagement issues and is a specialist in diversity.
With her policy development expertise and strong links with ethnic minority community and civic voluntary organisations both nationally and locally, Rokhsana has a strong understanding of community needs and dynamics across the full range of public policy issues and a strategic and creative approach to ethnic minority engagement.
She lead's the enterprise's European Network of Experts on Radicalisation (ENER) which advises, and is supported by, the DG Justice, Freedom and Security of the EC in. ENER consists of leading experts on radicalisation that lead to acts of violence from different academic disciplines and practitioner experiences who are renowned specialists in their field.
As a member of EMAG, her work primarily focuses on BME employment and the Olympics 2012. Additionally, she is a member of the UK government's Muslim Women's Advisory Group and a trustee of the Uniting Britain Trust, a charity that works in supporting civil society initiatives that address issues of interfaith dialogue, cohesion, equality, and social justice. She supports a number a civil society organisations and provides one-to-one mentoring to BME youth. She contributes to policy thinking on US and the Islamic World through the leading American think tank, The Brookings Institution. In June 2009, she was honoured in the Queen's Birthday Honours List, receiving an Order of the British Empire (OBE) for services to Black and Minority Ethnic communities.
Hugh Harris CBE
Director, London First Global Network, London First
Formerly Associate Director, Bank of England 1988-94; Commissioner/Deputy Chairman/ Acting Chairman, Commission for Racial Equality 1995-2000; Advisory Committee, Windsor Fellowship
Currently Member of Business Leaders Advisory Group, Diversity Works for London, LDA; Member of London Strategic Migration Partnership Board; Council member, London Civic Forum
Board member Newham College of Further Education
Wilf Sullivan
Wilf Sullivan has worked for the TUC since December 2004, when he was appointed as TUC Race Equality Officer.
He worked in Local Government with young people involved with the criminal justice system for ten years and subsequently as a Principal Personnel Officer dealing with recruitment and equal opportunities monitoring.
As a lay trade unionist, Wilf held membership of NALGO (now UNISON), holding a range of posts including shop steward, social services convenor, branch secretary, negotiating committee chair, and branch president.
He was appointed by NALGO (now UNISON) as a Regional full-time officer in 1990 and worked for ten years organising and representing members in health, local government and higher education. He worked as UNISON's National Black Members Officer from 2000 before moving to the TUC as the Race Equality Policy Officer.
He is active on race quality policy matters both inside and outside of the trade union movement is currently Vice-Chair of the UK Race and Europe Network, is a co-opted Executive Board member of the European Network Against Racism and sits on a number of race equality research academic advisory boards.
Sandra Kerr
Sandra is the National Director for Race for
Opportunity which is a business led network of organisations from the private and public sector working and committed to
race equality as part of their business agenda.
Sandra strongly believes there is a need for wider business engagement across all four strands of the campaign, recruiting and developing individuals, marketing to ethnic minority people as profitable consumers, including diverse communities within CSR activities and including ethnic minority businesses in supplier chains and networks. Sandra is particularly passionate about raising the profile of senior role models from diverse backgrounds to inspire the next generation and creating an inclusive environment.
Before joining Race for Opportunity Sandra worked in the Cabinet Office advising Cabinet Ministers on diversity and policies on race, disability, gender, and work life balance across Whitehall. Prior to this she worked for the Department of Work and Pensions delivering frontline services to 33,000 customers whilst managing a diverse team of 120 employees. She also spent some years as a personal development and IT skills trainer.
Sandra also finds some time to work as a consultant team adviser for the Work Foundation's Leadership Programmes for senior leaders in the public and private sector.
www.bitc.org.uk/workplace/diversity_and_inclusion/race/index.html
Jeremy Crook OBE
Jeremy is the Director of the Black Training and Enterprise Group, a national charity that works to improve education,
skills and employment outcomes for black and minority ethnic communities. He has 25 years experience of promoting diversity
and developing practical solutions in the public, private and third sectors.
Jeremy is the Vice Chair of the Department for Work and Pensions Ethnic Minority Advisory Group and Equality Schemes Reference Group, Vice Chair of the national Learning and Skills Council's Equality and Diversity Committee, a non-executive board member of Greater London Enterprise and a member of the Specialist Assessment Committee for the Queen's Award for Voluntary Service.
Shaynul Khan
Shaynul Khan is Assistant Executive Director of the East London Mosque and London Muslim Centre. Graduating in Accountancy and subsequently completing an MBA in Capacity Building and Change Management, Shaynul’s career (thus far) has been focussed on supporting charities and organisations delivering services to the grass root communities.
At the East London Mosque, Shaynul is primarily responsible for the organisations strategic development and its 33 projects and services. He is passionate about developing services that change people's lives, and such examples include award winning projects such as:
- TH Council of Mosques which won beacon status in 2003
- Development of the London Muslim Centre which won beacon status in 2004
- Improving School Attendance in Partnership which won beacon status in 2002
- East London Mosque winning Supermodel Mosque 2008
- Way to Work winning the Third Sector Awards 2008
Currently, Shaynul is focussing on developing projects tackling worklessness and training, access to health services and the capital construction of a multi-storey women's resource centre.
Shaynul is founder and treasurer of the Bangladeshi Drugs Project (Nafas), delivering treatment, outreach and school based education services.
He is also founder and secretary of the Osmani Trust, offering services to difficult and hard to reach youth. Projects include employment support, mentoring, gang conflict mediation and health & sports. The gang conflict mediation project (AASHA) won the British Crime Prevention Awards in 1997 and in the same year represented the UK in the European Award for Crime Prevention.
As a member of EMAG, Shaynul also supports the Olympics 2012 focus group.
Timothy Campbell
Timothy Campbell is an entrepreneurial businessman who first became known by the British public after being crowned the winner of the hit BBC series The Apprentice and going on to become the first Project Director of the Health & Beauty division within Sir Alan Sugar's company, Amstrad PLC. Prior to working for Sir Alan, Tim had a very successful career with London Underground and progressed from a Graduate Trainee to a Senior Marketing Project Manager before applying for the high profile business programme. When he left Amstrad after two years to launch his own business, Sir Alan's message to Tim was testament to his ability and potential.
"He has been a great asset to the company and I wish him the best of luck for the future. He was the right choice and I will be there to offer any help and guidance should he need it."
Tim, 31, has gone on to found his own entrepreneurial social enterprise Bright Ideas Trust, a charitable organisation which encourages young budding entrepreneurs from disadvantaged backgrounds to start business ventures, by giving them greater access to start-up finance, real business mentors and professional services advisors. Bright Ideas Trust has already generated successful start-ups, much excitement and interest from Corporates and innovative young entrepreneurs alike, not to mention receiving Government backing and praise from senior MPs across all political parties including our Prime Minister Gordon Brown and the leader of the opposition David Cameron.
Tim is well respected within the business community and has had the pleasure of speaking to several audiences across the country including Ernst & Young, Deutsche Bank, Accenture, Citibank, Department for Work & Pensions, NHS, Conservative Party, The Arts Council, Octopus Investments, NSPCC, J P Morgan, Learning & Skills Council and Morgan Stanley just to name a few. He has shown a talent and ability to actualise his ideas and plans and coupled with his positive outlook on life and what can be achieved by taking a 'no excuses' stance his inspirational messages are always well received and sought after.
Tim is fortunate enough to be asked to comment on a variety of topical matters and regularly appears on BBC television and in broadsheet newspapers including most recently the Financial Times. He is the face of the British Library's campaign to promote their services and has been described as 'the human face of business' by one broadsheet newspaper.
Tim has spent much time within various communities and institutions, promoting an entrepreneurial culture and motivating others, particularly the younger generation, to pursue their dreams. He is a Cabinet Office Social Enterprise Ambassador and a Child Ambassador for London and was appointed by Beverley Hughes, the Children's Minister, to focus on the particular problems of the capital's young people. Tim is also a great supporter of the Jack Petchey Foundation, the ACLT, as well as the NSPCC and Connexions and has received a number of awards including recently being named as one of the Young Guns by Growing Business and fittest entrepreneur by Men's Fitness!
Tim continues to follow his passions and believes that anything is possible with the right support and the right people.
