Shahed Amanullah

Shahed is co-founder and CTO of Affinis Labs, an award-winning social innovation firm that helps clients creatively tackle complex global challenges through entrepreneurship. Through Affinis Labs, he incubates startups for global markets and organizes hackathons to create social impact around the world. At Affinis Labs, Shahed helps manage the development and launch of incubated initiatives and builds the technology architecture for portfolio companies. Shahed briefed President Barack Obama on several occasions on the work of Affinis Labs and efforts to bring together American and global Muslim communities.

Shahed is also the co-founder of Zakatify, a social impact startup in partnership with the PayPal Giving Fund that turns annual giving into a social experience for Muslim communities and beyond. From 2011-2014, Shahed served as Senior Advisor for Technology at the US Department of State, where he worked on digital diplomacy in the bureaus of Secretaries of State John Kerry and Hillary Clinton. He has served on Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe’s Council on Youth Entrepreneurship and is a 2016 Truman National Security Fellow.

In 2001, Shahed created Altmuslim, an online magazine with 2.5 million annual unique users, and served as its editor-in-chief for 10 years before its 2011 acquisition by Patheos. In 1998, he created Zabihah, the world's first and largest Halal restaurant guide, with 10 million annual users and 500,000 mobile app downloads. Shahed was also co-founder and CEO of Relatia, a venture-backed mobile software company acquired in 2001.

He has been named three times (2009, 2010, and 2011) as one of the 500 most influential Muslims in the world by Georgetown University & the Royal Islamic Strategic Studies Centre in Jordan, one of the 500 most influential entrepreneurs in the global Islamic economy (2015, 2016, 2017), one of the top 10 most visionary Muslims by Islamica Magazine (2007), and the winner of the SXSW Community Service Award (2007).

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