Daily Times

LAHORE: A meeting of the Board of Trustees of the Institute of Leadership & Management (ILM) Trust was held at the University of Management & Technology (UMT) that unanimously announced the appointment of Ibrahim Hassan Murad as the executive president of ILM Trust and UMT Board of Governors, besides appointing Dr Ahmed Umar as the chairman and Farooq Salman as the vice chairman of the trust.

The meeting was convened in the wake of the sudden demise of former ILM Trust chairman Professor Dr Hassan Sohaib Murad in a car accident near Gilgit on September 10, 2018. The meeting was attended by Dr Khurshid Ahmed, Dr Rafiq Ahmed, Muhammad Mian Soomro, Dr Ejaz Shafi Gillani, Dr Ahmed Omar, Farooq Salman, Ibrahim Hasan Murad, Arsalan Khan Khakwani, Dr Muhammad Nawaz and Abid HK Sherwani. The Board of Trustees paid rich tributes to the services of the departed for the cause of education, Islam and Pakistan.

Ibrahim was appointed a trustee in the year 2014. He holds a master’s degree in Educational Leadership & Management from the University of Warwick. Prior to his current appointment, Ibrahim served as the executive director of UMT, after having initially served as the director of Academic Quality & Assessment.

He serves as the president of Institute of Knowledge & Leadership (IKL) since 2016. IKL provides talent development solutions to large size public and private organisations in the United Arab Emirates, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and other Gulf Cooperation Council states.

He is also the editor-in-chief and publisher of the Academia Magazine, the country’s leading source for credible and professional guidance and insights into the education sector. Ibrahim has also founded Sitara-e-Hilal Foundation, which aims at infusing patriotism, spirit of sacrifice and service to the nation among school-going children.

Ibrahim has high-level experience in strategic higher education administration with a special emphasis on institutional and campus development, resource mobilisation, student engagement, success and e-learning.

Dr Ahmed Umar is a scholar at UMT. He received his PhD in Biochemistry from Washington State University in 1991 and did his master’s degree from DePaul University and bachelor’s from the United Kingdom. He worked as a research scientist before being drawn towards exploring how emerging technologies can be utilised for training and development of children and youth.

Dr Ahmed Murad served as the vice president of Sound Vision, an educational multimedia company in the United States until 2012. He has dedicated himself towards developing self-learning software, widely used in Islamic education nowadays.

He has taught courses on contemporary Islamic issues at the American Islamic College in Chicago and at UMT. He is a leading researcher on historical development of Islamic thought and jurisprudence and an active participant in inter-faith dialogue.

ILM Trust Vice Chairman Farooq Salman Murad has been a trustee since 1997. He graduated in Engineering & Management from the University of Loughborough. He has worked as a management and organisational development consultant, conducted training programmes for various educational and community organisations across the world. He was chairman of Muslim Aid and Muslim Council of Britain secretary general. Currently he is the director general of Islamic Foundation, Leicester, UK.

Published in Daily Times, September 24^th 2018.