Board Members

Dr. Asad U. Shah is the Chairman of the Board of the ICWFD.  A social entrepreneur who not only recognized the barriers to education and ICT in the developing countries but provided new ways to give free access to the highest quality content and skills for 21st century employment to the underprivileged countries. Dr. Shah has over 20 years experience in international consultancy, working with UN agencies, public and private sectors.  His forte is electronic trade facilitation, e-government and education. He is also the founder and CEO of one of the largest offshore software development houses (www.paplion.com). A graduate from University of Houston USA, he Initiated a global workforce and human resource development program that is one of a kind.  Dr. Shah has also provided real life and tangible technological solutions to meet the UN’s Millennium Development Goals and as someone who hails from a developing country but who has been exposed to ICT in work and experience; he is able to give the developing countries perspective as well as a multidisciplinary perspective to the Commission.

Jim Kohlenberger is a Member of the Board of Directors of ICWFD.  Mr. Kohlenberger serves as the Executive Director of the VON Coalition and a former White House senior technology policy advisor.  At the White House he helped formulate U.S. policy on technology, telecommunications, and the Internet. Specifically, he worked to help pass the Telecommunications Act of 1996, help shape the administration's hands-off approach to the Internet and e-commerce, and help spearhead administration efforts to bridge the digital divide and connect every classroom to the Internet.  He now runs his own consulting practice.

John Gage is a Member of the Board of Directors of ICWFD.  Mr. Gage is Chief Researcher and Vice President of the Science Office for Sun Microsystems, an international information technology company based in California.  He was one of the founders of Sun, in 1982, when a group of students and professors from Stanford and the University of California, Berkeley joined to create open systems in hardware and software.  He has served on the Boards of Trustees of the United States National Library of Medicine, FermiLabs, the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute, NetDay, Schools OnLine, United States National Research Council, the Internet Society (ISOC) and other scientific and educational groups.  Mr. Gage also serves on the Markle Foundation Task Force on National Security, the Board of Advisors of the United States Institute of Peace, the National Academy of Sciences, and the International Advisory Board of the Malaysian Multimedia Corridor.  He attended the University of California, Berkeley, Harvard Business School, and the Harvard Kennedy School of Government.

Ms. Sadaf Shah is a Member of the Board of Directors of ICWFD. Ms. Shah is an accomplished marketing professional with over 12 years of professional and academic experience.  She is the former Country head for Trade Info Net and Project Coordinator for Time Life Inc. ( a division of Time Warner AOL) in Pakistan.  In addition to her position as Secretary, Ms. Shah acts as the Commission’s Director of Strategic Alliances.  She also sits on the board of RESCUE an NGO focused on Education and poverty alleviation. She received a Masters degree in Business Administration from Punjab University in Lahore, Pakistan, and Bachelors of Arts degrees from Kinnaird College in Lahore, Pakistan.

Nadir Shafi is a Member of the Board of Directors of ICWFD.  Mr. Shafi is currently Vice President at Wells Fargo Bank in San Jose, California.  Prior to this he worked at J. Tim Lynch & Co., CPA as Business Development Manager, Marketing Director and Director of Technology. He has a Masters in Business Administration from Indiana University and Lahore University in Pakistan.  He has an International Diploma in Computer Sciences from the National Computer College in London, UK.

Dr. Eugenia Soboleva Member of the Board of Directors of ICWFD Dr. Soboleva is a Director at Quality Austria, a training, certification and evaluation organization in Vienna, Austria. Formerly she was European Quality Director and the European Auditor for Quality with the Austrian Quality Foundation. She received PhD in Chemistry from the Institute of Physical Chemistry, in Moscow, Russia. She has also worked at the Joint FAO/IAEA Division of Nuclear Techniques in Food and Agriculture, and has extensive experience with UN agencies (FAO, IAEA, UNIDO, UNODC, UNEP, WHO, WTO, ITC etc), private companies and governments.

Sarah McCue started her career in Washington, DC in 1988 writing speeches for the United States Trade Ombudsman, later serving as an adviser to small businesses on their foreign market entry and e-commerce strategies for the U.S. Small Business Administration’s Small Business Development Center program. 

As a result of national business and e-commerce initiatives she developed, Sarah was invited by the United Nations International Trade Centre in Geneva to replicate these programs globally.  Since 1996, she has served as senior adviser and consultant to several United Nations and World Bank organizations on small business, international trade and export development, information and communications technology and women's empowerment issues.  She is also the author of eight business and technology books.

Dr. McCue advocates for the innovative use of technologies for global communication, commerce, education, mentorship, mobilizing, and giving voice to the voiceless throughout our world.  For example, she is the creator of several websites including The Remembering Site, an online memoir-writing platform to write and preserve our life stories; and she mostly recently led the creation of BluMail.  BluMail provides free e-mail accounts, educational content, employment leads, entrepreneurship, networking, mentoring, and volunteering opportunities to those in developing countries who are coming online and new to the Internet.

She has served on several boards including as President of the North American Association of Business Educators, an organization she served for nearly a decade; UNDP representative to the United Nations Information and Communications Technology Task Force; and she currently serves on the Board of Advisors to the World Computer Exchange Advisory Council; UN Global Alliance for Information and Communications Technology for Development; and the International Four Freedoms Forum, a human rights NGO she and David Roosevelt co-founded.

Sarah is a University of Michigan undergraduate, and holds a Master's in Public Administration from George Washington University and a Ph.D. in Public Administration and International Business from Wayne State University.