Position: Chairman
Organization: International Child Art Foundation
Country: USA
Dr. Ashfaq Ishaq has more than thirty years of experience as entrepreneur, educator, manager, researcher, and civil sector leader. He launched his first business at the age of fifteen, which paved the way for him to self-finance his education in Pakistan and his graduate studies in the United States. He began his professional career at the World Bank, where he analyzed industry projects, conducted seminal research on entrepreneurship and co-authored Success in Small & Medium Scale Enterprises (Oxford University Press, 1987). He left the World Bank to join the economics faculty at the George Washington University and was occasional lecturer at the U.S. Foreign Service Institute.
During the 1990s, as CEO of USA International, Inc., Dr. Ishaq developed private energy projects in emerging economies, advised international clients on acquisitions in the U.S. banking sector, conducted an independent assessment of a $1.2 billion World Bank financed private power project, evaluated privatization of Kazakhstan’s largest tire factory, and participated in management buyout of a New York business publication. He regularly contributed to Institutional Investor and Infrastructure Finance. In 1994 he was invited to make the first-ever presentation at the World Bank headquarters on Build Own and Operate/Transfer (BOO/BOT) projects.
In 1997 he founded the International Child Art Foundation and serves as its chairman. He negotiated an exclusive license from the U.S. Olympic Committee for ICAF’s Arts Olympiad, which is today the world’s largest and most prestigious art and sport initiative for children. To date, more than 5 million children worldwide have participated in the Arts Olympiad and benefitted from the program. Dr. Ishaq hosted the first-ever national children’s art festival in U.S. history, and every four years since 1999 he hosts the World Children’s Festival on the National Mall in Washington, DC – the world’s largest international children’s celebration.
Dr. Ishaq’s pioneering work on the development of creativity to foster peace was published in the U.K.’s leading medical journal The Lancet in 2006. The UNESCO Laboratory at University of Melbourne in 2007 published his analysis on building prosperity and peace. His writings have appeared in the Education Standard, Finance & Development, SchoolArts, Journal of Conflict Resolution, and Frontline. Since 1998 he has served as editor and publisher of ChildArt magazine.
In 1996 Dr. Ishaq chaired a business conference on Pakistan held in Washington, DC. In 2003, he organized the very first educational symposium of the Qatar Foundation for HH Skeikha Mozah in Doha. He has chaired sessions at the American Power Conference, the World Summit on Media for Children, and the World Cultural Economic Forum. He was keynote speaker at the 2006 annual conference of the International Society for Education through Art (InSEA) held in Portugal. In 2008 he organized and chaired a youth panel at the World Cultural Economy Forum in New Orleans. In 2010 he organized and moderated the first-ever children’s panel at a major business conferences – the Global Competiveness Forum in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
Dr. Ishaq holds a Ph.D. in economics from the George Washington University. He is a Francis Hesselbein Community Innovation Fellow of Leader-to-Leader Institute (formerly, the Peter F. Drucker Foundation). In 2004 he received the prestigious American Muslim Award in Los Angeles, California, and the World Culture Open Award for Humanitarian Service in Seoul, Korea. He is member of the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences, and the International Academy of the Visual Arts. He is global advisory board member of Human Dignity and Humiliation Studies, advisory board member of the Global Child Mental Health Campaign, and senior advisor on entrepreneurship development to the Business Council for International Understanding (BCIU).