Faisal Qureshi Archives

Outgoing AKUAANA President’s Message to Alumni, December 2015

December 24, 2015 By Saeed

Dear alumni,

Happy Holidays everyone!

Your Alumni Association’s new Executive Council will be taking over on January 1, 2016. I wanted to personally thank all of you for all the support that my team and I have received over the last two years. It has been an honor to serve you all.

Our intent has always been to grow AKUAANA and provide value to our members. We have been met with many successes and some unfinished business. Our numbers have grown by 900% and the traffic to our Facebook page and website is now in the thousands. Abdul Basit Saeed (2007), our Web Manager, has been the rock around which the technical aspects of our web presence have been built and the organization will always be indebted to him.

We have been granted 501(c)(7) status and our taxes are up to date. I cannot thank Shazia Hussain (1990), our Treasurer, enough for getting these two critical issues taken care of. The 501(c)(7) status allows our holdings to be tax free and firms up our legal status.

The organization could not have flourished without the careful organization that Atif Shafqat (1993), our Secretary, has provided. We held regular meetings, kept careful notes and our agenda items stayed constant. He guided the rewriting process of the AKUAANA Constitution and Bylaws, as well as the Executive Council elections. He leaves a legacy that will help keep the guiding principles of AKUAANA strong.

We enter a new phase in the coming years. The need for increased involvement of the younger classes, continued membership drives and defining our mission are the critical components of success.

I wish President Elect Habib Chotani (1995) and his team the best of success, and thank you all again.

Best regards
Faisal G. Qureshi (1993)
AKUAANA President, 2014-2015

AKUAANA President’s Message, March 2015: Visit to AKU

March 24, 2015 By Saeed

March, 2015

Dear AKU Medical College Alumni,

I was fortunate enough to visit AKU on a recent trip to Pakistan. I met with Dean Abbas and some of the leaders of the AKU Alumni Association, Asia Chapter including Saad Shafqat. We discussed many things, with the most important being the continued need for alumni involvement with AKU. Our alumni have a vested interest in the continued success of AKU, as it is a reflection our accomplishments.

Just as the alumni of Harvard University are active in the affairs of their alma mater, and are very proactive if the Harvard brand is threatened, so must we be wary of anything affecting the AKU brand. Whether we admit it or not, AKU has directly impacted our continued success across the globe and we have to take an active part in protecting its legacy.

I brought up many other aspects of the relationship with Dean Abbas and Saad Shafqat. Our keynote speaker from the 2014 Alumni Reunion Dinner in Washington DC, Dr. Dale Shaw (immediate past president of the Duke University Alumni Association) made some key points about enhancing the role of the University in ensuring a strong future alumni body. Perhaps the idea that most resonated with me was informing current medical students of their role as future alumni. One method to do this is to provide them with a life long ALUMNI.AKU.EDU email address. This email will help them identify themselves as AKU alumni in perpetuity. Other techniques that Duke University uses is to give medical students a certificate as a future alumnus of Duke on day one of their lives as medical students. We could emulate this and AKU could invite alumni back to AKU on an annual basis to give insights to medical students on life after graduation.

Finally, Dean Abbas and I discussed the creation of a dedicated mechanism to give back philanthropically to AKU. Using the Aga Khan Foundation (a tax-exempt organization) donation page, we will create an AKUAANA specific menu that allows alumni to donate to student support, patient support or research activities at AKU, Karachi. This will allow our alumni to show their support of AKU via a dedicated AKUAANA method that will help us determine the total impact of our alumni. The creation of this mechanism will streamline efforts for individuals or classes to make a combined donation. This is the first step in developing a long term AKUAANA endowment fund.

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In summary, our continued involvement with AKU is critical to our mutual success. I hope that alumni are able to visit AKU on their trips to Pakistan and the AKU Alumni Office would be very happy to arrange a tour and meetings with the faculty. There are many opportunities to give back and continue to be proud AKU alumni.

Faisal G. Qureshi
President
AKU Alumni Association of North America

AKUAANA President’s Message to Alumni: January 2014

January 1, 2014 By AdministratoR

January 1^st, 2014

Dear AKU Medical College Alumni,

Thank you for installing us as the leaders of your Alumni Association for the next two years. We would also like to thank our predecessors who have guided this association as we celebrate 25 years since the first class graduated from AKU in 1988.

There are roughly 1800 AKUMC graduates in North America and they represent the fastest growing segment of all medical graduates from Pakistan. Those of you who follow our website and our Facebook page already know how successful our graduates have been in their adopted homelands. We have some of the youngest professors, most successful academicians and brightest entrepreneurs in the country!

At this juncture, your association AKUAANA has to decide what its future holds. Is it a group that loosely represents very successful physicians in North America and meets once a year at the sidelines of the APPNA summer convention? Or can we be a strong, successful organization that will help shape our collective response to this ever-changing social, political and economical landscape? How can we foster and nurture medical students and new graduates trying to achieve success in this competitive environment? Where and how, can we make our lives and the lives of our families, children and those around us better? Where and how do we give back to the nation that we call our ancestral home?

We don’t pretend to have the answers to these questions, but do believe that when you take some of the brightest minds that Pakistan has nurtured, these answers will come. They will come slowly, incrementally, in fits and starts, but they will come. To do so, we have to engage our alumni and give them a platform to bring forth their ideas and then a mechanism to give these ideas life.

Clearly, none of these goals can be accomplished without active alumni involvement. This participation has to begin with becoming an AKUAANA member and then active participation in all the decisions that we have to make over the next 25 years. We start the membership drive this month, so please join us, encourage others and get excited about the possibilities!

We thank you again for this opportunity to serve the organization and hope that we can live up to your expectations. If you have any questions, comments or thoughts, please reach out to any member of the team.

AKUAANA Administration, 2014 - 15
Designation	Name	Class	Email Address
President	Faisal Qureshi	1993
Secretary	Atif Shafqat	1993
Treasurer	Shazia Hussain	1990
Web Manager	Abdul Basit Saeed	2007

Happy New Year and best wishes,

Faisal Qureshi, 1993
President, AKUAANA (2014-15)

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