Afzal Ahmad, M.D.

Co-Founder, President & Chief Executive

Afzal Ahmad, recently retired from his highly successful Ophthalmology practice based in Chicago. He is known for his numerous local and international philanthropic endeavors and his extensive collection of South Asian art. His desire to cultivate the arts and culture of the region prompted him to establish the South Asia Institute, together with his wife. He has also endowed Professorships at the University of Michigan and the University of Chicago in order to promote education and research in South Asian visual arts.

Shireen Ahmad, M.D.

Co-Founder, Secretary & Chief Artistic Director

Shireen Ahmad is a retired academic anesthesiologist. Along with her husband she has assembled is one of the major South Asian visual art collections (Hundal Collection) in the US. Her strong desire to share the artistic heritage and build bridges between communities through the arts is manifested in the exhibitions, programs and events at the South Asia Institute. With her husband, she has established Professorships at the University of Michigan and the University of Chicago, that will foster the next generation of scholars, curators and critics in the field of South Asian visual arts. They are also the only South Asian Americans to have endowed professorships in South Asian arts at multiple USA universities.

Omer Ahmed

Chief Strategy and Development Director

Omer Ahmed is the President and the Chief Investment Officer of Abaris Capital Advisors, a Chicago based boutique investment advisory firm specializing in niche alternative investment strategies. Previously Omer has been associated in a senior role with numerous well known investment houses all over the world. He and  his family have supported several local charitable organizations including St Jude’s Children Hospital and HOBY ( a Youth Leadership Charity). Internationally their charitable affiliations span various areas of Middle East and South Asia in the field of Education, Healthcare and Finance.

Azra Raza, M.D.

Azra Raza is the Chan Soon-Shiong Professor of Medicine and Clinical Director of The Evans Foundation MDS Center at Columbia University. A practicing oncologist seeing 30-40 cancer patients weekly, she also directs a basic cancer research lab with hundreds of original publications in high profile journals. She worked with President Clinton designing Breakthrough Developments in Science and Technology and with VP Joe Biden for the Cancer Moonshot initiative. Her life is devoted to early detection and prevention of cancer.

Deepanjana D. Klein, Ph.D.

Deepanjana Klein is the Director of Acquisitions and Development at Kiran Nader She has more than a decade of experience as the International Head of Department for Contemporary Indian & Southeast Asian Art at Christie’s, and as an independent curator in New York City. She has a Ph.D. in Indian Art History from De Montfort University in England and has taught art history, theory, and aesthetics at the Leicester School of Architecture in England and at the Kamla Raheja Vidyanidhi Institute for Architecture and Environmental Studies in Mumbai. 

Her publications include contributions to the Encyclopedia of Sculpture (Fitzroy Dearborn Publishers, 2004). 

Sairah Alvi, Ph.D.

Sairah Alvi has a Masters in Global Management from the London School of Economics and a Ph.D. in Molecular Oncology from Rush University, Chicago. She is the Founder & CEO Precision Diagnostic Laboratory, that provides genomic and molecular diagnostic bioinformatics and education in personalized medicine.

She has been surrounded by the literary great minds since early childhood and as a book ambassador she has regularly hosted writers, poets and musicians. Over the years she has supported several local arts organizations in Chicago.