Shahed Amanullah

Summary

Shahed is a founder and COO of Zabihah, the world's first and largest Halal restaurant guide, with millions of annual users and 750,000 app downloads. Zabihah is now expanding under a new and aggressive growth strategy with a global team of 30. He is also Managing Director of Elian Capital, a ​San Antonio-based private equity fund manager and investment advisor that focuses on global fintech companies. From 2020-2023 he served as SVP of Digital Products and interim SVP of Marketing at growth strategy & research consulting firm Frost & Sullivan. He co-founded Affinis Labs, an award-winning social innovation firm that tackles complex global challenges through entrepreneurship that was acquired by Frost Capital in 2019. From 2011-2014, Shahed served in President Barack Obama’s administration as Senior Advisor for Technology at the US Department of State under Hillary Clinton, where he designed and launched several entrepreneurship, social innovation, and technology initiatives, and regularly briefed President Obama personally. 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/BeliefNet. He 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. Shahed was also co-founder and CEO of Relatia, a venture-backed mobile software company acquired in 2001. Shahed appears in the media frequently to discuss technology, foreign policy, and entrepreneurship in venues such as CNN and MSNBC, has spoken at the Council on Foreign Relations and Center for American Progress, and has published essays in academic journals and newspapers such as the Washington Post and Chicago Tribune. He has been named (2009, 2010, and 2011) as one of the 500 most influential Muslims in the world, one of the 500 most prominent figures in the global Islamic economy (2015, 2016, 2017, 2018), and won the SXSW Community Service Award in 2007. Shahed has a BSc in Engineering from UC Berkeley (where he served as Student Body Vice-President) and an MBA from Georgetown.