Sayed Zubair Farooq

Sayed Zubair Farooq is an innovation and strategy executive and a veteran C-Suite professional based in the United Arab Emirates and Australia. Farooq is the advisor to the director general of the executive office of His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, vice president and prime minister of the United Arab Emirates and Ruler of Dubai. Previously, he was Head of Group Strategy at the Crescent Group, which comprises Crescent Wealth, Crescent Finance, Crescent Institute and Crescent Foundation. He is also Vice Chairman of the Board of Trustees for the Responsible Finance and Investment (RFI) Foundation, Director of Goodforce Labs and co-founder of the Falcon Network. Sayed Zubair Farooq is also the Chief-Executive Officer of Unity Grammar College, A private Islamic School in Australia. He is also serving as the Vice-chairman of the Bangladesh Freedom Party founded by his father. Throughout his career in Australia and The United Arab Emirates, Farooq has been involved in several initiatives involving Islamic Economy and Australian Islamic Education.

Family background and early life

Sayed Zubair Farooq was born in Bangladesh in a prominent family that belonged to the old aristocracy of Bengali Muslim society, his father was Sayed Farooq Rahman and his mother is Farida Khan. His father was 2IC of the 1st Bengal Lancers Regiment and a Colonel of the Bangladesh Army who led the 15 August 1975 Bangladesh coup d'état and founded the Bangladesh Freedom Party, running as a presidential candidate against Ershad in 1986. Sayed Zubair Farooq's paternal ancestral home is Malikpur Dewan Para in Naogaon District of Rajshahi Division, his paternal family is a renowned family known as the Peer lineage of Rajshahi, being a Peer family, the family has the Sufi hereditary title of Dewan. The family were of Hadhrami Sayed Arab origin descending from an Hadhrami Arab Muslim missionary belonging to the Ba’Alawi Tariqah that had come to preach Islam in the Rajshahi region from Hadhramaut in Yemen centuries prior, he was known as Zinda Peer meaning Living Saint locally after he had died. His mother Farida Khan, a daughter of S. H. Khan, the younger brother of Abul Kashem Khan a leading industrialist and minister belonging to the politically prominent Khan family of Chittagong descending from Shamsher Khan, a 16th Century minister in the ancient city of Gour. Farooq had spent most of his childhood in Bangladesh, coming to Australia aged sixteen as a Political Exile and Refugee with his family excluding his father who was detained in Dhaka by the Bangladesh Government.

Education

Sayed Zubair Farooq has a Ph.D. at the intersection of Behavioral Economics and ethical banking (Islamic Economy) received from the University of Technology Sydney, a 1st class Honors in Business (BBus) and a Degree in Law (LLB) from the University of Technology Sydney. He is also a fellow Certified Islamic Professional Accountant (CIPA). In addition, he has completed the Regional Entrepreneurship Acceleration Program from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Career

Farooq has served as the advisor to the director general of the executive office of his highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, vice president and prime minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai. In his tenure as advisor, he was one of the key enablers of a number of the strategic initiatives of the Government of Dubai, including Dubai 10X, Dubai Capital of Islamic Economy, Area 2071 and the Arab Strategy Forum. In his career, he has been responsible for deploying a number of these initiatives and most prominently known for his contribution to building the Thomson Reuters Global Islamic Finance and markets team. Besides this, he achieved a number of impactful industry firsts for Thomson Reuters while he managed a team of 30 fully dedicated resources. He was the Global Head Islamic Capital Markets at Thomson Reuters, where he advised and served large corporates, multilaterals and governments in the Middle East, North Africa and South East Asia. During the duration of his five-year leadership stint at Thomson Reuters where he oversaw the Islamic markets strategy, he conceived and led his 25 strong team to achieve a number of industry firsts besides growing and leading a profitable and highly visible business. He also advises and produces a number of research based insights for government entities in the GCC including Dubai, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia such as the Dubai Islamic Economy Development Center, The Executive Office, Central Bank of Bahrain, Economic Development Board Bahrain, Tadawul Saudi Arabia and the Islamic Development Bank. Prior to his role at Thomson Reuters, Dr. Sayd was a legal and structuring advisor at Dar Al Istithmar, a boutique advisory firm based in Oxford and owned by Deutsche Bank, Oxford Center for Islamic Studies and Saudi Bin Laden Group. Prior to this, he led the growth and innovation strategy at the centre for Islamic Finance at the Bahrain Institute of Banking and Finance.

Sayed Zubair Farooq is also the chairman of Finocracy and vice chairman of the board of trustees for the Responsible Finance and Investment (RFI) Foundation. Sayed Zubair Farooq is appointed group head of strategy of the Sydney-based Crescent Group, which has pioneered Islamic investing in Australia. The appointment comes as the group launched a five-year strategic plan to grow its assets under management to $5 billion by the end of 2026.  It plans to achieve this through the launch and issuance of Islamic-compliant mortgages by subsidiary Crescent Finance from the second half of next year and through the strong growth of the well-established Crescent Wealth, Australia's only Islamic-compliant superannuation fund. He served as the vice chairman and CEO of Middle East Global Advisors, a leading intelligence and connectivity platform and a projects advisor to the Dubai Islamic Economy Development Center, Government of Dubai. He is also a board member and senior partner for the global consulting firm, Dinar Standard, which also manages the media platform Salaam Gateway and publishes the annual publication State of the Global Islamic Economy Report and the Global Islamic Fintech Report.

He has advised, taught and drafted standards for regulators and universities throughout his career and sits on the editorial advisory board for two prominent blind peer-reviewed academic journals.

He is also the Chief-Executive Officer of Unity Grammar College, an Private Islamic School in Australia.

Humanitarian and social life

Sayed Zubair Farooq writes as a contributor to many Islamic-based publications and blogs such as Australasian Muslim Times, Halalop, The Productive Muslim. He is also a writer on the renowned Newspaper, The Medium. He also appears in many talk shows and interview channels such as OnePath Network. Farooq has been able to come back to Bangladesh after the popular uprising against the autocratic rule against former prime minister of Bangladesh, Sheikh Hasina. He has joined the Bangladesh Freedom Party, founded by his father Colonel Sayed Farooq Rahman as Vice-chairman. He has appeared on the popular YouTube Channel belonging to Pinaki Bhattacharya for an interview after returning to Bangladesh. Sayed Zubair Farooq is also on the board of directors of The UN Refugee Agency Australia for UNHCR. He is married.

References

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