We are lucky to have 2 speakers coming from out of town for our first OPENTalk of 2016 - Rami Nashashibi and Dilawer Syed! The theme of our OPEN Talk is "The Power of Giving". This OPENTalk is free and will be held at the UPS Headquarters at 55 Glenlake Parkway. The event will take place on Saturday, March 19th at 10am. This will be a great opportunity to connect with other professionals in the Atlanta community while getting a shot of inspiration from our successful speakers. Rami is coming from Chicago and is the Executive Director of IMAN, a community organization that fosters health, wellness and healing in the inner-city by organizing for social change, cultivating the arts and operating a holistic health center. Rami is expanding this same model to the city of Atlanta. Dilawer is coming from California and is the President of Freshdesk, a cloud-based customer support platform that was founded with the mission of enabling companies of all sizes to provide great customer service. He is also the President of OPEN Global ================================================= BIOS: Rami Nashashibi has served as the Executive Director of the Inner-City Muslim Action Network (IMAN) since its incorporation as a nonprofit in 1997. He has a Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Chicago and is a Visiting Professor of Sociology of Religion & Muslim Studies at the Chicago Theological Seminary. He has worked with several leading scholars in the area of globalization, African American studies and urban sociology and has contributed chapters to edited volumes by Manning Marabel and Saskia Sassen. Rami has lectured across the United States, Europe, and Asia on a range of topics related to American Muslim identity, community activism and social justice issues and is a recipient of several prestigious community service and organizing honors. Rami and his work with IMAN have been featured in many national and international media outlets and in 2009, Chicago Public Radio selected him as one of the “Top Ten Chicago Global Visionaries”. In 2014, the Center for American Progress profiled Rami as one of the “14 Faith Leaders to Watch in 2014” and he was named one of the “500 Most Influential Muslims in the World” by The Royal Islamic Strategic Studies Center in concert with Georgetown’s Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding. Rami lives with his wife and three children on Chicago’s Southwest Side. Dilawer Syed is an entrepreneur with experience in building and scaling businesses globally. Dilawar has a trackrecord of leadership in consumer web, SaaS and enterprise software with Silicon Valley's top names including Yahoo!, Siebel Systems/Oracle and SAP; as well as in entrepreneurial efforts in emerging markets as CEO of Yonja Media Group, a social media company backed by Tiger Global. As President at Freshdesk, Dilawar runs the company's North America business overseeing sales, marketing, customer success and partnership efforts. With more than 50,000 customers worldwide, Freshdesk is a SaaS market leader in customer management. The company is backed by Accel Partners, Tiger Global and Google Capital and has raised $94MM in funding. Dilawar is active in entrepreneurship development and civic causes, and served on President Obama's Advisory Commission on Asian Americans & Pacific Islanders (2009-2013), and continues to support a variety of civic causes nationwide.