About our Guest Speaker:
KAREEM M. IRFAN, Esq.
Mr. Irfan is President of the Council of Religious Leaders of Metropolitan Chicago, and has served as Chairman of the Council of Islamic Organizations of Greater Chicago, a federation serving over 50 mosques & 400,000 Muslim Americans. He has contributed in a leadership capacity for over 25 years with American and International projects on Inter-Faith collaboration, Public Relations, Leadership Development, and Strategic Planning. Mr. Irfan leads Friday and Eid sermons and prayers at several Mosques, and speaks at fund-raising events for social service projects and communities across the US. He is recognized for engaging presentations at civic, corporate and inter-faith events on Professionalism, Ethics & Integrity in Education and Business; Civil Rights & Fundamental Liberties; Inter-religious collaboration and bridge-building; post 9-11 challenges of religious radicalism; and contemporary Islamic issues, evolving Muslim perspectives, and relations with the Islamic world, he has lectured across the US and abroad, including England, France, India, Japan, Netherlands, Phillipines, South Africa and Thailand. He has featured on international print, radio and TV media including NPR, CNN, ABC’s Nightline, BBC, TIME, VOA, New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. As General Counsel (Intellectual Property) for a global company specializing in energy management, he currently leads a team of legal professionals covering business initiatives in the Americas region. He has a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from Bangalore University, an M.S. in Computer Engineering from University of Illinois and a J.D. from DePaul University.