Past Events

Amir Khan

President, CEO & Founder

Amir Khan is a computer networking visionary who founded and led Viptela’s market-leading, cloud-first, Software-Defined Wide Area Networking (SD-WAN) business before the acquisition by Cisco. As prescient as he was in identifying the $8B opportunity for SD-WAN, Amir recognized that network hampered the cloud journey and founded Alkira in 2018 with Atif Khan to reinvent networking for the cloud era. Amir’s vision is to deliver the cloud network as a utility. As CEO/Founder, he has led Alkira’s delivery of the industry’s first on-demand, as-a-service, point and click, unified multi-cloud networking service that enables cloud architects to design, build, and deploy a global multi-cloud network in minutes. Alkira enables enterprises to implement 50% less firewall capacity, and reduce TCO by up to 40%. Before Viptela, Amir held leadership roles at Cisco, Juniper, and Nortel. He holds 4 patents. Amir earned an MS in Electrical Engineering from the University of Colorado at Boulder, and a BS in Electrical Engineering from the University of Mississippi.

Atif Khan

CTO & Founder

Atif Khan is a renowned routing expert with extensive experience bringing ground-breaking networking solutions to market and in architecting some of the largest and most sophisticated global networks. He is responsible for Alkira’s technology vision and overall engineering and product development of Alkira Cloud Services Exchange. Atif was VP Technology and Solutions, and a founding team member at Viptela, where he developed a world-class, cloud-first, highly scalable SD-WAN solution with advanced routing, segmentation, and security capabilities. Following the Viptela acquisition, Atif was Senior Director of the Enterprise Networking Business at Cisco. Prior to Viptela he held senior positions at Alcatel, Huawei and Juniper Networks and holds 7 patents in routing, security and overlay multicast. Atif received a BS in Computer Science at the University of Colorado at Boulder.

This session focuses on how you should go about exploring a solution that solves the problem for the user in an iterative and agile manner. One of the most common mistakes that entrepreneurs do is fix their minds on the original idea they had. They cling to their original idea and overlook many other ways of solving that problem. They also become attached to specific use of technologies and lose sight of the user’s context. This session will help you with brainstorming techniques to explore ideas using a wider angle. You will also learn some prototyping techniques and approaches to get feedback from the user and creating an experience vision. You’ll also be introduced to the power of storytelling.

This session focuses on exploring all the stakeholders relevant for your problem statement. It will introduce you to the tools and techniques in doing the research to understand the context and needs of the user. Some of the techniques include ethnographic user research, empathy map, persona, current journey and user’s perspectives to help build empathy with the user. Empathy helps in seeing the world from the perspective of the user.

Dr. Syra Madad is American pathogen preparedness expert. She is the Senior Director of the System-wide Special Pathogens Program at NYC Health + Hospitals where she is part of the New York City’s response to the Corona-virus disease pandemic across the city’s healthcare system. She was featured in the Netflix documentary series Pandemic: How to Prevent an Outbreak.

Dr. Uzma Syed is Infectious Disease Specialist, Education Leader, Civic and Political Activist, Humanitarian and Founder & President of Align Us Inc. She is part of the COVID-19 Task Force, WHO training Healthcare preparedness for epidemic, Antimicrobial Stewardship Committee, Infection Prevention Committee at Good Samaritan Hospital Medical Center

This is first of 5 workshops by Mashhood. In this session, Mashhood will introduce the concept and benefits of Design Thinking as a human-centered process of innovation. He will also introduce the participants to the “Transform 3+1” framework for transforming an idea into a business with Design Thinking which is published in his book as well. The four stages are: ‘Understand problem’, ‘Devise solution’, ‘Craft business’ and ‘Manage risk’.

Tania Aidrus is Pakistan’s Chief Digital Officer. A former Chief of Staff and Head of Strategic Initiatives on the Next Billion Users (NBU) team at Google, Tania quit her position to head Prime Minister Imran Khan’s ‘Digital Pakistan’ initiative. She will share her vision and will be joined by Khurram Jamali, who is the CEO of Digital Pakistan Foundation and together they are leading the Digital Revolution is Pakistan. Tania and Khurram will talk about the Digital Pakistan initiative, milestones and next steps.

Rehan Jalil is a Serial Entrepreneur and a Limited Partner in technology venture funds. Currently, he is the President, Founder and CEO of SECURITI.ai, the Cloud Services Security Company.

Join us for a fireside zoom chat on Entrepreneurial Resilience featuring Rehan Jalil in conversation with Umair Khan as he talks about Resilience in these unprecedented times and what entrepreneurs learn from economic downturns .

This week we have a special guest to co host this workshop with Natasha Kazmi! she will teach us about stress eating so we can avoid it and stay healthy during shelter in place.

Amanda is the founder of “yestotherapy” and has been in the field of counseling for 14 years. She specializes in working with adults, adolescents and children, providing individual, couples and family therapy. She has worked on mobile crisis response teams, crisis stabilization, high school districts, inpatient and outpatient for adults and children. She has experience in the criminal mental health field.

Amanda is an expert on nutritional psychology and believes it is a vital integration of a whole person well being. She will talk to us and share skills about “Stress eating during Shelter in place.”

Natasha Kazmi is a licensed Psychotherapist in San Jose, California. She offers therapy and coaching to children, teenagers, adults, couples, and families. Her approach utilizes warmth, positivity, and strength-based facilitation in order to carve out routes of self-exploration and growth. She specializes in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy CBT, Dialectical Behavioral Therapy DBT, Trauma-focused CBT, and Psychodynamic approach. Check out her website for more information www.TrustMentalHealth.com

What you need to know about Covid 19. Epidemiology, Myth-busting and Treatment updates

In this seminar, Dr. Adeel will provide a general overview to the COVID-19 pandemic, current treatment options and future state. Dr. Adeel will also take your questions online.

Prof. Dr. Adeel Butt is currently Professor of Medicine and Professor of Healthcare Policy and Research at Weill Cornell Medical College in New York and Qatar. Over the past 20 years, Prof. Butt has held numerous senior academic positions, including Clinical Director, Residency Program Director, Division Chief, Department Chair, Institute Director and Corporate Chief Quality Officer. He has published over 150 papers in high impact medical journals, presented over 145 abstracts at major international conferences, and has mentored numerous young physicians and researchers who now hold key positions in academia

Dr. Adeel Butt has lectured extensively around the world as a visiting professor and consulted with governmental and non-governmental organizations in building research, educational and training capacity in resource limited settings.

This seminar is Part 4 of 5 part series brought to you by a distinguished professor, author and an entrepreneur, Naeem Zafar who is sought out by faculties and universities across the world.

Naeem Zafar is a Dean’s Teaching Fellow and a member of the faculty at the University of California Berkeley, and Professor of the Practice at Brown University. He teaches courses in Entrepreneurship, Technology Strategy, Innovation and New Venture Finance at Brown and Berkeley. Naeem is the co-founder and CEO of TeleSense and has authored five books on entrepreneurship.

You can purchase ticket for one workshop for $15 or buy the entire package of rest of the 3 workshops for just $60 that comes with one-year free OPEN Silicon Valley membership. OPEN SV membership gives you access to multiple such events throughout the year including exclusive behind the scene access to many serial entrepreneurs.