FAWAKIH FOUNDER & CEO
Saif Omar founded Fawakih in 2008, after identifying a gap in accessing Quranic Arabic within the US. Within Fawakih, he served as a full-time Executive Director from 2012-2016, while also instructing courses on Arabic and Tajwid.
Upon completing his tenure, Saif joined the El-Hibri Foundation, where he served as the Senior Program Officer, advising and providing resources to leaders across the nonprofit sector. He continues to lecture and write on topics of Entrepreneurship, Nonprofit Management, and Quranic Arabic.
In 2018, he returned to Fawakih as the CEO in order to scale out its online program, oversee completion and publishing of its 6-level curriculum, and build partnerships for Quranic Arabic learning.
As a social entrepreneur dedicated to solving building and scaling organizations in the Muslim education space and also a father of four.
Saif Omar majored in Near Eastern studies at the University of Michigan. During this time, he traveled to Egypt and Morocco in pursuit of Arabic and undertook graduate level classical Arabic coursework and translation projects with Dr. Sherman Jackson. He has pursued advanced Arabic training in Fez, Morocco, Cairo, Egypt, and Amman, Jordan, and has taught Arabic at the Legacy Institute. Ustadh Saif was awarded the prestigious Fulbright Scholarship to Damascus, Syria. He enhanced his Arabic knowledge and grounded his understanding of Islam through the study of Islamic law, theology, and classical literature texts.
Upon conclusion of his studies in Damascus he joined Harvard University where he completed a Masters in Public Policy and served as a HRH Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Fellow in Nonprofit Management as well as the President of the Kennedy School Muslim Caucus. Ustadh Saif has advised leaders at the high levels of government and private sector in his role as a Director at Good Harbor Consulting.