Team

Doug Chabot first visited Pakistan on a climbing expedition in 2000, and the mountains and people have brought him back many times since then. He co-founded Iqra Fund alongside Genevieve Walsh because he believes in improving educational opportunities for children, especially girls, in the remote northern parts of the country.

Doug works as Director of the Gallatin National Forest Avalanche Center in Bozeman, Montana, and as a professional mountain guide. He has been on climbing expeditions to Alaska, Nepal, India, Afghanistan, Tajikistan and Pakistan, and established many first ascents.

He earned a bachelor’s in Outdoor Education from Prescott College in 1986.

One of our first staff members, Pervez Sajjad joined Iqra Fund in 2011 as a volunteer, and became our director of operations in mid-2012, bringing a passion for girls education and community development, as well as experience in both public and nonprofit organizations.

Pervez serves the organization in a key leadership role, overseeing our Pakistan-based operations, finances, organizational development, strategic partnerships and in-country fundraising strategy.

He represents Iqra Fund at external meetings and leads the process of building, maintaining and strengthening relationships with stakeholders including the federal, provincial and district governments, private donors, NGOs and communities. He also assists the CEO and board in policy making and maintaining our international nonprofit status in Pakistan.

Prior to joining Iqra Fund, he worked at the Pakistan Red Crescent Society’s national headquarters as an IT management specialist, and at Netsolace, Ovex Technologies and Endpoint Technologies as a Technical Support Engineer. He has volunteered for local community and student-based organizations in Gilgit-Baltistan.

Pervez has a master's in Project Management from SZABIST University and a postgraduate degree in Computer Sciences and Management from Iqra University.

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Former Chief Operating Officer of Forbes Inc., Tim Forbes joined Iqra Fund’s team of founding board members in 2012. Tim brings expertise in business and nonprofits, small and large, as well as travel and business experience in Pakistan, starting in the 1970s when he drove his motorcycle from Karachi, on the southernmost tip of Pakistan, to Khunjarab Pass on its northern border.  

A friendship with our co-founder, Doug Chabot, as well as a connection to the communities we serve in Pakistan, drew him to Iqra Fund. Today Tim advises the organization on partnerships and major donor relations.

Anne Rockhold is the Chief Finance Officer at Accel Partners, one of the most successful venture capital and private equity firms in Silicon Valley. She is passionate about Iqra Fund’s mission because wants more women and girls to have opportunities to lead, and she recognizes the importance of education in achieving that.

A member of Iqra Fund’s advisory board since 2014, Anne serves on Iqra Fund’s financial and audit committees.

Jennifer Sweeney has worked as general counsel for several start-up companies, practiced corporate law for Weil, Gotshal & Manges, and worked in private equity and investment banking.

She joined the Iqra Fund board in 2013, and enjoys applying her experience working with early-stage growth enterprises and her passion for empowerment through education to Iqra Fund’s work.

Jennifer holds a JD from Harvard Law School and Bachelor of Business Administration from the University of Notre Dame. She also serves on the board of Meritus College Fund, a nonprofit that empowers low-income San Francisco youth to earn college degrees, as well as on the Architecture Construction Engineering board, a nonprofit providing teacher and administrator training and strategic professional services to under-resourced schools. She lives with her family in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Rabia Iqbal is a business development and investor relations professional at Mubadala Capital who began her career in finance at Morgan Stanley. Active in the Pakistani diaspora community, especially the young professional community in New York City, she is very involved with nonprofit organizations that give back to Pakistan. She is particularly interested in mentorship, education and empowering young women.

While visiting several of Iqra Fund’s partner communities in Baltistan in 2018, Rabia was inspired by our students’ dreams and aspirations. A board member since 2017, she is driven to make Iqra Fund a nationally-known and respected organization in Pakistan.

Rabia holds a Bachelor of Science in Applied Economics and Management from Cornell University. She lives in Manhattan with her husband.

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Durre Nabi grew up in Pakistan and in Saudi Arabia and has been committed to education and development for almost 20 years as a board member, volunteer and fundraiser.

Durre has worked as a corporate attorney at the law firm of Jones, Day and a management consultant at A.T. Kearney. Currently, she is taking a career break to raise her two children, who are students at the Dalton School in New York, where she is an active volunteer. She earned a bachelor’s degree in History and Literature from Harvard College in 1995, a JD from Georgetown University Law Center in 1998, and an MBA from Columbia Business School.

Durre has been part of the Iqra Fund Advisory Board since 2014.

Deidre Combs has written three books on resolving conflict and overcoming challenges through integration of common wisdom from the world’s lasting cultural traditions with systems theory and brain research. As a management consultant, coach, mediator and professor, she provides leadership and conflict strategies to corporate, government and NGO clients including Aveda Corporation, the US Forest Service, US Postal Service, IBM and Landmine Survivors Network.

Deidre is a core instructor in Montana State University’s Leadership Fellows Certificate Program, and also teaches leadership skills to State Department-selected student and professional leaders from the Middle East, Africa, Asia, Eurasia, Latin America and Pakistan’s FATA region. Previously, she spent nine years with IBM as a software development project manager and vendor liaison specializing in healthcare solutions. She also worked as marketing director for the electronic medical record provider SolCom Incorporated, leading its corporate rebranding effort.

Deidre holds a bachelor’s in Mathematics and Spanish from the University of Wisconsin–Madison, a master’s in Information Systems Technology from George Washington University, and a doctorate focused on world religions from UCS/Naropa University.

As one of our founding board members, she has been integral for our strategic planning. This includes helping us answer the big questions of “what’s next?” for our students after completing their education.

Andleeb Dawood is the founder and owner of Saffron Table, a contemporary south Asian restaurant in Bozeman. Formerly an investment banker specializing in financing large building and construction projects for rural hospitals nationwide, she lent her business startup savvy to our founding board.

Part of the Iqra Fund board since 2012, Andleeb has helped us build a sustainable funding platform that is transparent and accountable to both the organization’s donors and to the communities that Iqra Fund serves. She is passionate about women’s empowerment through education.

Nadia is a founding board member of Iqra Fund. She has also managed the local operation of Iqra in Pakistan.

Nadia has worked with the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank as an Advisor to the Government of Pakistan on trade and investment agreements. Her work is focused on enhancing economic ties with regional countries, including adversarial neighbors with the aim to create regional stability. She has advised the government on free trade negotiations with China, India, Iran, Turkey and other trading partners. Nadia has also served as Pakistan’ Trade and Investment Counsellor in Prague where she was a part of the negotiation team which successfully negotiated Pakistan’s access to European Union’s scheme of Generalized System of Preferences.

Nadia holds a Master in Public Administration with a concentration in Development Economics from Harvard University. Nadia also holds a Master from Duke University. While at Harvard, Nadia served as the President of Pakistan Students Group and the Co-chair of South Asia Engagement Forum.

Nadia is a social and political activist. She strongly believes in expanding the space for women’s participation in economic and political spheres. She is committed to the girls education in remote and conservative tribal areas of Pakistan where Iqra is based.

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Tanya Rosen is as a conservationist with wildlife nonprofit organizations in Central Asia and Pakistan. Working with the Baltistan Wildlife Conservation and Development Organization - Project Snow Leopard, and others, and as a member of the International Union for Conservation of Nature Cat Specialist Group, she assists local communities coexist with large carnivores.

While doing conservation work in northern tribal Pakistan prior to Iqra Fund’s existence, Tanya paid out of her own pocket for girls to attend school. And as a founding Iqra Fund board member, her experience with the people and culture was integral to helping us get established in the region.

Previously, she spent seven years practicing international law in Europe and the US and earned degrees in science and international law from Milano, Yale, Harvard and Bard. She has also lent her law acumen to our leadership.

Jason is the Chief Advancement Officer for the Bozeman Deaconess Hospital Foundation. Prior to that, he led global corporate communications for the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies in Geneva, Switzerland; was head of communications in the Red Cross’s Asia Pacific zone; and served as CEO for large American Red Cross chapters in Texas and California. He has also worked as the Chief Relations Officer for the Montana State University Alumni Foundation.

Jason is a graduate of the DiploFoundation’s International Humanitarian Diplomacy program and has degrees in Political Science and English from MSU. An Iqra Fund board member since 2014, Jason brings a passion for education and international development, and an entrepreneurial approach to organizational planning, growth, and communications.

An Iqra Fund staffer from 2013 to 2018, Sabeena Zehra worked closely with our scholarship students and teachers. She also supported new teacher hiring and training, and was responsible for gathering data on our programs.

Sabeena has depth of education programming experience, having worked previously as a science and phonetics teacher at Ashraf Public School in Skardu, Pakistan, and a professional social worker for the Aga Khan Rural Support Program. She holds a bachelor’s degree in Sociology and Education from Karakoram University and completed her master’s in Sociology from AIOU Islamabad with Iqra Fund support.

Passionate about girls’ education and its potential to empower women and foster gender equality, Sabeena dreams one day all girls will be educated, empowered and treated equally. “Development can only be possible when we eliminate discrimination between men and women and they strive to work together,” she says. She wants to see girls working in fields including engineering, teaching and medicine.

Natasha Kazmi has spent 15 years in various roles in the financial services industry, ranging from corporate restructurings to asset management, and has worked in Pakistan, Indonesia and the U.S.

Natasha earned both a bachelor’s and master’s in Business Administration from the University of Karachi, and is also a board member at West Side Montessori School in New York City, where she lives with her husband and two children.

She believes in the transformational power of education that is blind to wealth and circumstance.  

Amna Zafar has an academic background in social sciences and experience working in the development sector with national NGOs in Pakistan. She holds a Bachelor of Science with Honors in Social Sciences from SZABIST University.

Amna joined Iqra Fund in 2016, bringing a passion for eradicating the education crisis in Pakistan and for promoting women’s empowerment. She works closely with our country director and CEO to support our grant writing, communications and fundraising.

Originally from Hushe, Muhammad Ali Khan has been with Iqra Fund since 2011. As a field officer in Hushe Valley, Ali is responsible for promoting education and implementing Iqra Fund’s programs locally. In addition to overseeing the performance of our schools, he supervises Iqra Fund’s adult literacy program in Hushe and helped start our special needs program support.

Ali holds a Master of Political Science from Karakoram International University and has worked closely with community leaders in our partner villages. He also volunteers at the Hushe Welfare and Development Organization, a community-based group that works to improve one of the main valleys where Iqra Fund works.

Iqra Fund’s first employee, Ali believes deeply in the importance of girls' education in his region.

Andrea Bennett was the owner and founder of Meridian Ltd. in Bozeman, Montana, and CEO and founder of Boutique Franchise Systems, Inc.

Traveling the world with extended visits in Asia including Mongolia, India, Nepal and Bhutan, Andi saw firsthand the hardships many impoverished girls and women face. She was passionate about increasing education and health care opportunities for this population, and brought to Iqra Fund her skills as a businesswoman, her love for helping others, and a desire to make the organization successful, transparent and financially sustainable.

In her honor and with support from her family and friends, Iqra Fund is working to build Andi's dream project: a high school designed to help Pakistani girls realize their entrepreneurial and leadership potential.

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