Omar Shahid Hamid

Omar Shahid Hamid has served as a police officer for two decades. As a member of the Sindh Police’s Counter Terrorism department, he has faced numerous challenges, including surviving an ambush by gangsters, being falsely implicated by colleagues, and narrowly escaping a bombing of his office by the Pakistani Taliban while serving as CID chief.

Following the 2011 attack on his office by the Pakistani Taliban, he took a five-year sabbatical to focus on writing and worked as a political risk consultant. In 2016, he resumed his role as a Counter Terrorism Officer. His insights and experiences have been widely quoted in major international publications, including The New York Times, USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, The Times, Le Monde, Reuters, CNN, and BBC.

His literary career began with The Prisoner (2013), which was longlisted for the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature 2015 and is now being adapted into a feature film. His second novel, The Spinner’s Tale (2015), won the 2016 Karachi Literature Festival Prize. He received the same award again in 2018 for his third novel, The Party Worker (2017), which is currently being adapted for a TV series. His fourth novel, The Fix, delves into the intricate world of cricket match-fixing. Betrayal marks his fifth novel.

Ibrahim Amin

Mr. Ibrahim Amin is a successful businessman in the financial services sector and is a highly qualified self-motivated professional with a prompt and decisive style of management rendering hassle- free services to all valued clients.

He started his career by working with a renowned Leather Garments Manufacturers / Exporters at Sialkot for two years and attained rich experience of Administration, Foreign Trade, and versatile business techniques. He has achieved a certificate from Leather Industrial Development Organization and was also operating a retail shops in Karachi, Lahore and Islamabad.

There-after, he started his own business of a Collateral & Valuation Management working with Banks in Lahore. Initially with Allied Bank, MCB Bank and The bank of Punjab. He struggled and established a good repute in North by establishing a company “Tristar International Consultant Pvt. Ltd.” which is registered on the approved panel of Pakistan Banks Association as “Any Amount” and all major Local / Foreign Banks for the last 18-years.

He came to Karachi in 2015 to establish and develop business in this big city and he successfully established all services operations in South as well by maintaining high quality standards and good relationship with banks and corporates.

While working with the financial institutions he began contemplating on finding IT solutions for enhancing the customer experience.

Then he started working extensively on training needs of the banking and financial sector specializing in payment systems and IT for which he established an associated Firm under name & style of M/S. Dellsons Associates. This company has its credit numerous conferences on the subjects of Digital Banking, E Money Institutions, Cyber Security, IFRS9 and Forensic Accounting and Fraud Risk Management, just to name a few.

He has to his credit the introduction of an EBot which enriches the banking experience of the CIB through one click of a button. He executed induction of Cyber Security Control Systems in various Banks and also started consultancy services to cater their sophisticated needs by using the modern technologies for up-grading Operational Systems and professional competence of Human Resource amongst Banks & other Organizations.

He has worked on a payment system to help improve the movement of finances for the freelancers of Pakistan and in order to broaden the scope of business-to-customer (B2C) transactions through legal channel, he was engaged with SBP to allow these payments so that freelancers will not have to face any hassle and due to his continuous and countless efforts, the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) has also enhanced payment limits against freelance services in computer and information systems and other freelance services from $ 5,000 to $ 25,000 per individual per month. After long struggle he succeeded to establish “Pakistan Freelancers Association” (PAFLA) which is a non-profit organization founded to empower Pakistani freelancers through mentoring, providing opportunities, collaborating with government, industry and academia, and providing them a platform as well as a support group to help grow their career and overcome their challenges.

Recently he has partnered with IBA CICT for Digitization of Banking Sector of Pakistan. The project aims to build the capacity of overall banking sector of Pakistan in order to bring technology disruption.

He is also a Mentor and Judge at IBA – Sindh Research Incubation Centre. This is a project initiated by the Information Science & Technology Department, Government of Sindh in collaboration with IBA - CICT to provide the selected start-ups incubation facilities for 6 to 12 months which include co-working space at IBA, utilities, seed capital and access to investors. The objective is to ensure sustainable growth for early stage IT-enabled product based ideas by providing domain specific mentorship and investment opportunities to create commercially viable technology startups from Sindh. He is mentoring Ain Savaree (http://www.ainsavaree.com//) , a new start up providing mobility services exclusively for women.

He has also partnered with PwC Pakistan (A. F. F. Ferguson), PIAIC, ISACA, ACCA and ICMA.