Contributor

Shahed Amanullah

Co-Founder of Affinis Labs, Creator of Zabihah, and former Senior Advisor, US State Department

Shahed Amanullah is co-founder of Affinis Labs, an award-winning social innovation firm that tackles complex global challenges through entrepreneurship. He is also the co-founder of Zakatify, a social impact fintech startup in partnership with the PayPal Giving Fund. From 2011-2014, Shahed served as Senior Advisor for Technology at the US Department of State under Secretaries of State Hillary Clinton and John Kerry. Shahed is also the founder of 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. In 1998, he created Zabihah, the world's first and largest Halal restaurant guide, with 10 million annual users and 750,000 mobile app downloads. He has been named as one of the 500 most influential Muslims in the world (2009, 2010, and 2011), one of the 500 most influential entrepreneurs in the global Islamic economy (2015, 2016, 2017, 2018), one of Islamica Magazine’s Top 10 Most Visionary Young Muslims (2007), and the winner of the SXSW Community Service Award (2007). He has also served on the boards of nearly a dozen national non-profit organizations focused on building stable Muslim-American identities.