Personal Biography:

Ahmad was the Director of Programs at Zeum, a hands-on, interactive, art and technology museum for youth and their families located in San Francisco’s cultural arts district, the Yerba Buena Center. Ahmad is responsible for the strategic program direction at Zeum, including exhibits, technology, education and public programs. He is currently leading a CEO initiative to transform Zeum’s physical space and its programs over the next three years.

Ahmad has extensive experience managing program initiatives in the public, private and nonprofit sectors in the areas of technology, education and workforce development. Prior to joining Zeum as Director of Programs, Ahmad was Managing Director of Evolved Knowledge, an education technology consulting firm working with school districts, local governments and business organizations. He also directed the Multimedia Skills Initiative for East Bay TechNet (a program of the Oakland Chamber of Commerce) and served as regional director of NetDay, a national educational technology organization funded and supported by then President Clinton with industry leaders such as Cisco, ATT, and 3M, to bridge the digital divide in U.S. urban enterprise zone schools. Ahmad’s corporate experience includes employment positions with global management consulting firms, including working as a project manager for Renaissance Worldwide and as a consultant to Andersen K-12 education practice in Los Angeles and Holland.

Ahmad is actively engaged in his community and serves as commissioner on the Oakland Housing and Rent Board, Board appointee to the Oakland School District’s Budget Advisory Committee, member of 100 Black Men, Board Member of the Oakland Chamber of Commerce’s Leadership Institute and is co-founder of Youth Sounds, a multimedia after-school program in west Oakland and advisor to Eastmont Computing Center, located in east Oakland.
Ahmad earned his undergraduate degree from Long Beach State University and graduate studies at Emory University.

Goals:

• I am interested in examining the use and implications of large public spaces - like museums and/or thematic centers – as community-based hubs for fostering youth-centered innovation and supportive activities. Further, my curiosity lie in understanding how new media technologies in a community-based hub environment can become an expressive, dynamic resource for mediating creativity, learning and collaboration. And consequently, I am interested in how these new media technologies in the community-based hub environment can play a transformative role in diffusing innovation with respect to its relationship to educational, cultural and business environments in local communities.
• I would like to explore sustainable business models for creating community-based hubs based on the consideration of ‘mutual benefit’ as established through public-private partnership. Mutual benefit would be minimally based on exploration of new markets on one side and practical application of social innovation on the other side.
• In consideration to the first two goals, I am interested in helping mitigate community-friendly policies that would encourage venture-equity-public investment in community hubs as a new market opportunity and as a social benefit.