Speaker: Akhtar Badshah, Microsoft Community Affairs
Akhtar Badshah, Microsoft Community Affairs: “The value of technology is when you bring social and economic change.”
October 27, 2005, 3:00pm, Cordura 100, Stanford University
Speaker Bio:
Akhtar Badshah is senior director of Microsoft Community Affairs, where he administers the company’s global community investment and employee programs. Among his responsibilities, Badshah manages Unlimited Potential, a global initiative to promote digital inclusion and increased access to technology skills training in underserved communities.
Unlimited Potential focuses on improving lifelong learning for disadvantaged young people and adults by providing technology skills through community-based organizations around the world. Since May 2003, Microsoft has made grants of cash and software totaling nearly $50 million to more than 150 programs in 45 countries.
Badshah also oversees programs aimed at helping nonprofit organizations improve their effectiveness through increased technology capacity. This includes Microsoft’s signature relationships with organizations such as NPower and Boys & Girls Clubs of America.
Prior to joining Microsoft, Badshah was the CEO and president of Digital Partners Foundation, a Seattle-area nonprofit organization whose mission is to utilize the digital economy to benefit the poor. At Digital Partners, he established the organization’s core programs in India, Africa and Latin America. His work included development of the Digital Partners Social Venture Fund, designed to support the expansion of IT-based anti-poverty efforts around the world, and the Digital Partners Social Enterprise Laboratory (SEL), an initiative that provides mentorship and seed money to entrepreneurs whose vision and business models use ICT to empower the poor and their underserved communities.
Badshah serves on the Advisory Board for the Development Gateway Project of the World Bank, World Links India, World Corp., Teachers without Borders and Datamation Foundation India. He has co-edited “Connected for Development – Information Kiosks for Sustainability,” and authored “Our Urban Future: New Paradigms for Equity and Sustainability” and several articles in international journals on ICT4D, megacities and sustainability, urban and community development, and housing.
Badshah is a doctoral graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the former president of the Lambda Alpha International New Jersey Chapter, an honorary land economic society. He is very active in the Seattle area community and serves on various local committees.
