Team Members

M. Fareed
Farukhi

Founder

M. Fareed Farukhi: Mr. M. Fareed Farukhi, CPA is the Managing Partner at Farukhi & Company, LLP in Orange CA. Mr. Farukhi has over thirty-five years of tax, business consulting and M&A experience and has served on various for-profit and nonprofit boards.He has been active in the Southern California communities serving and working in various capacities with organizations on issues dealing with homelessness, immigration, cultural diversity and understating, education, interfaith, health care and other social issues in providing direct services and resources, also serving as a Vice Chair Commissioner for the 4th District in Orange County on the Board of Orange County Human Relations Commission. 

Mr. Farukhi is the Founder and Chairman of the Board of Universal Heritage, a startup non-profit, whose mission is to foster cross cultural engagement, education, research and understanding of people of all backgrounds. He is also the founder of Risala USA Foundation focused on addressing food insecurity and vulnerability of communities on the fringes of hunger. 

Mr. Farukhi is a community leader, visionary, and a bridge builder to collaborate with people and communities for positive social change. He was born in Bangalore, India, and is married and blessed with three children and a grandson. He currently resides in Orange County, California.

Father Gregory Boyle

Chairman

Gregory Boyle is the founder of Homeboy Industries in Los Angeles, the largest gang-intervention, rehabilitation, and re-entry program in the world. A native Angeleno and Jesuit priest, from 1986 to 1992 Father Boyle served as pastor of Dolores Mission Church in Boyle Heights, then the poorest Catholic parish in Los Angeles that also had the highest concentration of gang activity in the city. Father Boyle is the author of the 2010 New York Times-bestseller Tattoos on the Heart: The Power of Boundless Compassion. His new book, Barking to the Choir: The Power of Radical Kinship, was published in 2017. He has received the California Peace Prize and been inducted into the California Hall of Fame.  In 2014, President Obama named Father Boyle a Champion of Change. He received the University of Notre Dame’s 2017 Laetare Medal, the oldest honor given to American Catholics. Currently, he serves as a committee member of California Governor Gavin Newsom’s Economic and Job Recovery Task Force as a response to COVID-19.

Hesham Sitita

Board Member

Born in Egypt, Mr. Sitita is a Mechanical Engineering graduate of Mansoura University, Egypt and migrated to the United States in 1984 on a scholarship to attend UCLA. He previously worked in the construction industry in the Middle East prior to starting his own business in the US. 

In 1986 Mr. Sitita started Kareem Cart Commissary & Manufacturing Company, one of the largest privately owned food cart manufacturing and design companies in Los Angeles and across the nation. His street food carts and trucks can be seen from the beaches of Santa Monica to the east coast to midwest including New York, Chicago, and the streets of Washington DC. Mr. Sitita is a successful business entrepreneur and a philanthropist. He works tirelessly with various non-profits and places of worship among other organizations to help the families and communities that are under privileged and marginalized. He has been delivering food boxes and other essentials form his warehouse to South Central Los Angeles and East LA needy among others including in Orange County and the Inland Empire.

Mr. Sitita is on the Board of House of Egypt as its Vice President in Los Angeles, and is an active Board Member of Hope & Mercy Foundation helping needy families across the globe. Mr. Sitita is happily married and blessed with five children and one grandson. 

Nishat Ahmed

Chief Operating Officer

Nishat is the Founder and CEO of Michael Hopkins—a high end luxury clothing line for men. He is a member of the 2nd Call LA Sheriff’s Department Charitable Wing. Nishat helped found the La Canada Multi-Cultural Center where he initiated the international food drive with the Mormon Church. Nishat is the Chairman of the Political Caucus for LA Canada supporting Rick Warren in the 2008 general elections when Warren ran for US Congress, was the leader of the LA Canada Asian Community for Anthony Portantino who won the CA Senatorial elections, and has worked with the LA Canada Education Foundation since 2004.

Nishat received his BS in Chemistry and JD from Bangalore University, and an MBA in Finance from University of Illinois.

Dr. Adel El-Sahn

Board Member

El-Sahn was born in Cairo, Egypt, received his Bachelor of Science in Accounting, and worked as a credit analyst for an Egyptian Arab bank evaluating feasibility studies and designing cash-flow forecasting modules. He moved to the United States at the age of 26, where he received a Master of Business Administration and a Ph.D. in International Finance. His areas of expertise include strategic management of business growth, including the design and analysis of efficient and profitable structures of interdependent and synergistic business relationships, developing pragmatic and cost-effective solutions to the challenges facing trade and service-centric companies. He established a Los Angeles Market-Risk unit for the largest Japanese Trust Bank, and managed a four (4) Billion dollar derivatives portfolio to hedge against interest rate and foreign currency risks. Dr. El-Sahn is an entrepreneur, banker, realtor, and real estate investor/ developer. He is a positive contributor to local social developments. 

Most importantly he is a friend of those who strive to help others, advance the doing-of-good with humbleness, sincerity, and humility. Dr. El-Sahn is husband to Virginia, his wife of thirty years, and father to their son Adam – a successful Wall Street attorney. 

Umar Hakim Dey

Strategic Advisor

A native of the city of Compton, Umar A. Hakim Dey serves as Executive Director of ILM (Intellect Love Mercy) Foundation. After 13 years in telecommunications, Umar shifted his focus to become an entrepreneur, which opened him to social and community service work. He earned a business management degree from the University of Phoenix and a master’s degree in Ethical Leadership from Claremont Lincoln.

Umar is the founding principal of INKERIJ® (pronounced as Encourage) which is an advisory organization whose objective is to "disrupt irrelevant leadership and to make it relevant and solutions based leadership”. Umar is responsible for facilitating ILM Foundation’s programming and its social-preneurial vision for social change. As an active alum with American Muslim Civic Leadership (AMCLI) Institute, he is a facilitator and trainer for its national program housed at USC Center of Religion Civic Culture.

Umar is married and a proud father of a daughter.

Brynn Foster

Director, Regenerative Farming
& Indigenous Food Systems

Brynn Foster is the Founder of Voyaging Foods, gluten-free products made from Hawaiian grown canoe-plants such as taro and breadfruit flour. Inspired by a gift from her great-grandmother in the form of a poi cookie,  Brynn's passion for indigenous knowledge and food sovereignty is her guiding star.

Brynn consults to promote holistic values with the foundation that healthy habits start with yourself. She facilitates healthy relationships with mind, body and soul through her workshops, quarterly retreats and online  journal. She is a published author on the history of cooking and baking with Hawaiian Taro Powder, called Native Flour, Ancient Starch – Gluten-Free Recipes Using Ancestral Hawaiian Taro Powder.

Brynn is President of the Hawaii Farmers Union United-North Shore of Oahu Chapter, lobbied for family farming in Washington D.C, and a co-awardee of a grant to scale the commercial production of breadfruit flour in Hawaii.

Brynn was awarded "Island Innovator of the Year" by Hawaii Venture Capital Association, a participant in multiple accelerator business programs focused on Indigenous innovation & a board member of the Merwin Conservancy. As a women environmental leader with the U.S. Grassroots Accelerator and a finalist for the Global We Empower United Nations Sustainable Development Goals Challenge, she values the collective as a catalyst for positive change.

Her hobbies are rooted in Aloha 'Āina (love for the land which feeds), painting, cooking healthy meals, walking sacred sites, regenerative farming, and traveling off the beaten path.

Camila Dadabhoy

Head of Content Production & Development

A Southern Californian native with a desire to explore and create, Camila is a 2019 graduate with an English Literature major and a minor in Literary Journalism from the University of California, Irvine. Published over a span of twenty-plus platforms, Camila holds professional experience in the editing sphere, publishing realm, and in a journalistic capacity. Her credits include a position as Press Secretary for a 2020 Congressional Campaign, television script writer for CNN Analyst Peter Mathews, and current Copywriter employed under Centric Media. Camila currently resides in Orange County where she is pursuing a Master’s Degree in Journalism at Columbia.

Yusra Farzan

Head of Marketing & Strategy

Yusra Farzan has 8+ years of experience in marketing communications and has worked with Fortune 500 brands and high-profile clients in the United States and the United Arab Emirates (UAE).She has a passion for mission driven campaigns focused on diversity, inclusion, and representation of marginalized voices in media and marketing. She is also a former journalist and has written for Gulf News, the leading English daily in the UAE. 

Yusra lives in Orange County, California with her husband and daughter and enjoys traveling and reading. She is currently pursuing her Master’s degree in Journalism at USC.