Ahmad Mansur

in
CEO and Managing Director
Urban Economy Network

Ahmad is the founder, and CEO of Urban Economy, a community and economic development advisory firm and the managing director of its innovation network, a global platform for urban leaders to innovate change in cities and communities. Ahmad’s core interests lie at tackling the challenges and opportunities that intersect between community development, the global innovation economy, and regional competitiveness. Widely recognized as a regional strategist and director of large-scale change initiatives, Ahmad has led multi-stakeholder projects with organizations in the Bay Area and abroad, primarily in the areas of technology, education and workforce development. Recently, he launched the Green Learning Lab, a learning community for high school and community college instructors to develop standardized curriculum for green tech career options. Ahmad has held a variety of leadership roles that spans across public, private and non-profit sectors, including as the regional director for NetDay, a public-private partnership between the Clinton White House and business tech luminaries, such as Sun’s John Gage, Kleiner’s John Doer and Cisco’s John Chambers, to bring Internet access to K12 schools in the United States. He also was the director of Zeum, a San Francisco-based media arts museum and the director of workforce development for Peralta Community Colleges. Atlas, Ahmad worked as a consultant for the Dutch Ministry of Education with Arthur Anderson’s K12 education practice in the Netherlands. Ahmad holds BS degree from Long Beach State, Master of Strategic Leadership from St. Mary’s College of California and a Master’s degree in Political Economy from Emory University. He is currently Economic Opportunities Fellow at the Aspen Institute and a Community Technology Fellow with the Zero Divide Foundation. A sought-after speaker, Ahmad has spoken at the Business for Social Responsibility Annual Sustainability Conference, conduct seminar at Stanford’s “People, Computers and Design” speaker series and recently was invited as a speaker and panelist at a US Congressional Panel on diversity and biotechnology careers.