An ICT professional with more than 40 (forty) years of practical experience, Parvez Iftikhar is passionate about spreading fruits of Information Communications Technology (ICT) to everyone, particularly those living in remote rural areas. He is presently working as a consultant in various developing countries of Asia and Africa, mainly for ITU, World Bank, USAID, CTO, ADB, and some private international consulting houses.
Parvez has been working as the founding CEO and first employee of Universal Service Fund (USF) Pakistan. He built a vibrant organisation from scratch, and simultaneously executed projects to bridge the digital divide in the country. Under him USF Pakistan became globally recognized as a ‘success story’ at a time when most other similar initiatives were failing.
Before USF, Parvez was the country-head of Siemens-Telecom in Pakistan for over 7 years. He successfully managed multi-million dollar projects, including those involving transfer of technology and local manufacturing of state-of-the-art digital telecom equipment.
He has been on sabbaticals to reputable learning institutions like Carnegie Mellon University, and Harvard Kennedy School, USA, and Oxford University UK. He also received extensive technical and managerial training at Siemens, mainly in Europe.
Parvez has his website (www.Piftikhar.com), occasionally blogs, and writes Newspaper articles.
