Waleed completed his undergraduate degree at Brown University on 100% financial aid. In addition to Brown, he was awarded the Cornelius Vanderbilt Scholarship at Vanderbilt University and full scholarships at NYU's Abu Dhabi campus and Rice University in Texas. Waleed chose to attend Brown majoring in International Relations and further pursued a Master's degree in Modern South Asian Studies at the University of Oxford. He currently resides in New York City working for CNN's flagship international affairs show Fareed Zakaria GPS. 

Amenah graduated from Dartmouth College with a major in Comparative Politics and Development Economics and a minor in Arabic. She began her career in investment banking at PJT Partners in San Francisco and then moved onto becoming the Strategy & Finance Lead at Abhi Finance, a leading Fintech in the MENA region. Building on this experience, she transitioned into real estate development at Rafts Properties, where she now leads multiple large-scale projects in Pakistan and founded Rspace, a coworking space.

Arham is a PhD Candidate in Education at Harvard University. He works on issues in the philosophy of education and epistemology. His primary interests are in the epistemic status of children and the concept of indoctrination. Prior to his doctoral work, Arham worked as a teacher, tutor, and educator in a variety of settings in Pakistan, the US, and the UK. He also completed the BPhil (Masters) in Philosophy at the University of Oxford, and obtained his bachelors degree at Wesleyan University. 

Taha holds a Bachelor’s degree in International Relations and English from the University of Pennsylvania. He brings 8+ years of experience in college counselling and strategic communications. As the CEO of Check-Box Media, he has spearheaded narrative building and content production for renowned organisations like the World Bank, Federal Ministry of Health and notable public figures. Having previously worked at LGS JT, Taha is a seasoned college counsellor who has helped numerous students gain admission to the world’s most selective universities and secure financial aid.

Iman Iftikhar (she/her) is currently reading for an MPhil in Political Theory as a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University. Prior to joining Oxford, Iman graduated with distinctions in her B.A. in History and B.A. in Philosophy from Yale University. Originally from Lahore, Pakistan, Iman is interested in becoming a critical theorist beyond the confines of the ivory tower. 

Ahmad Jamal Wattoo is an MPA graduate from Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs. He has previously worked at the United Nations Department of Peacekeeping and the World Bank IBRD Manufacturing, Agribusiness, and Services department. He has also written for th4 Columbia SIPA Journal of International Affairs, a peer-reviewed journal published bi-annually by the university.

A native New Yorker with a lifelong aspiration to practice law, Shahrani earned a Juris Doctor (JD) from the University of Pennsylvania Law School in 2023, and joined Freshfields US LLP following graduation. She remains deeply connected to the Pakistani community and is passionate about increasing Pakistani representation in the legal field.

Eman is a graduate of Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism. After completing her master’s, she moved to Washington, D.C., where she joined the think tank world to pursue a career in international security at the Stimson Center. She has also been awarded the Sy Syms Excellence in Journalism fellowship at Women’s eNews. Here, she reported on the gender health gap, revealing how the neglect of women's health research leaves conditions like menopause and PCOS underdiagnosed, untreated, and lacking specialized medicine, causing widespread suffering. Additionally, she has served as a news blogger for Change.org, the world’s largest petition platform, where she has written on the impact of misinformation and disinformation in shaping public consciousness.

Cornell University & Yale University

Maryam Khan is a socio-legal scholar on South Asia, and a resident Research Fellow at IDEAS since 2014. She has an SJD (Doctor of Juridical Science) from University of Wisconsin Law School (2024), an LLM from Yale Law School (2009), a Graduate Diploma in Law (GDL) and Bar-at-Law from Lincoln’s Inn (2002-2003), and a B.A. in Government from Cornell University (2000). She is the first Pakistani to be awarded the Oscar M. Ruebhausen Yale South Asia Fellowship (2010).

Her academic journey began as a faculty member at the Law & Policy Program at LUMS (2006-2008, 2010-2013), where she was involved with curricular development for the innovative 5-year B.A./LL.B program. She designed and taught courses on Tort Law, Criminal Law, and Comparative Constitutional Law, and also facilitated the setting up of a Legal Aid Clinic (2013). 

As an academic and policy researcher at IDEAS, Maryam uses qualitative methods to study federalism and ethnic conflict, judicialization, legal mobilization, social movements, women’s struggles, comparative constitutionalism, and post-colonial constitutional history through an interdisciplinary lens. Presently, she is the country lead for Pakistan for a 5-year ESRC-funded project in collaboration with the Institute of Development Studies (IDS), University of Sussex for ‘Sustaining Power for Women’s Rights in South Asia’ (SuPWR). The SuPWR project has enabled her to deepen her earlier work on child marriages in Pakistan through a rigorous long-range multi-method qualitative study on the impact of civil society advocacy strategy on reform in this area.

Alongside, she is in the process of developing a public history program on Pakistan’s Constitution at IDEAS. This involves an oral history project on constitution-making, to be archived in the open access digital collections at the University of Wisconsin Law School; a spin-off project on women constitution-makers; a history blog on Pakistan’s Constitution, launched on the 50th anniversary of the Constitution (April 2023); and ongoing public education programs on the Constitution.

Maryam has published widely in international law journals, including Yale Journal of International Law, Harvard Journal on Racial & Ethnic Justice, Temple Journal of International and Comparative Law, and International Journal of Law in Context, amongst others. Her current book project derives from my doctoral research on constitution-making in Pakistan.

Among the recent scholarly events she has organized at IDEAS are an oral history workshop on Pakistan’s women constitution-makers, funded by the Royal Historical Society (RHS); and a writing workshop on ‘Law and Society in South Asia’ (LASSA), funded by the Law & Society Association (LSA). She also moderates a Book Talk Series at IDEAS, which is a quarterly forum for showcasing contemporary scholarship on Pakistan.

Harvard University

Kamil Chima is a producer, writer and director. He graduated from Harvard College in 2015 and set up Nehr Ghar Films, a film-production company based out of Pakistan. His first feature film, ‘Laal Kabootar’ (2019) was Pakistan’s Official Selection for the Academy Awards 2020. His second feature ‘The Queen of My Dreams’ (2023) premiered at TIFF 2023 and is having its US Premiere at SXSW 2024. His short film ‘Eid Mubarak’ won Best Live Action Short at NYICFF 2023, an Oscar
qualifying festival. Kamil is an alum of the IFFR Producers Lab 2023, and the Producers Network at the Marche Du Film at Festival de Cannes 2023.

University of Pennsylvania & Harvard Law School

Harvard University & Yale Law School

Ali is a founding partner of Renaissance. He spent nearly a decade with McKinsey & Company in New York and Pakistan focused on growth strategy and operational turnarounds in the financial services and FMCG sectors. He helped establish McKinsey’s Pakistan office in 2014, serving as the firm’s senior-most in-country consultant while overseeing growth from one individual to nearly 40 consultants.

While at McKinsey, Ali led the team that won McKinsey’s global New Ventures Competition for 2017 for a data-analytics solution to improve cash management at banks. The team went on to become the highest funded New Venture to date, receiving over USD 2 million in funding in addition to significant in-kind support. This was the first time in the program’s history that a Middle East based team won the competition

Prior to joining McKinsey Ali served as a Special Assistant and Speechwriter to United Nations Secretaries-General Kofi Annan and Ban Ki-moon.

Ali has a A.B in Economics with high honors, phi beta kappa, from Harvard College and a Juris Doctor from Yale Law School.