MMfD’s Governing Board is responsible for organisation’s strategic direction setting and providing oversight in various administrative matters. All of MMfD’s financial statements and audit reports are subject to Governing Board’s approval. The Board members bring expertise from academia, development sector, and the media and remain the core strength of the organisation.
Dr. Faisal Bari is the Director and Senior Research Fellow at IDEAS, an economic think tank. He is also an Associate Professor of Economics at LUMS and served as head of department from 2006-2008. Dr. Bari has over twelve years research experience in the field of industrial economics, development economics and education economics. He is a former executive director and current visiting research fellow at Mahbubul Haq Human Development Centre. He has also served as the Deputy Country Director for Pakistan with the Central Eurasia Project, and education economist for South Asia at the Open Society Foundation.
Dr. Bari has consulted for various multi-lateral and bi-lateral agencies including the World Bank, UNDP, DFID and the Asian Development Bank (ADB). He was also a columnist for the English daily, ‘The Nation’ and he currently writes for ‘DAWN’. Dr. Bari obtained his BA (Honors) from the University of Oxford and BSc from Government College, Lahore. He has an MA in Philosophy from the University of Punjab and a Doctorate in Economics from McGill University. Dr. Bari is the chairman of Media Matter’s for Democracy’s governing Board.
Aurangzaib Khan is a renowned media activist and development practitioner with a background in journalism over 20 years, including print and radio. As a media development specialist, including extensive advocacy, research and training experience, he has worked with journalists all over Pakistan, developing capacity in newsrooms and field reporting. He has assessed and worked with radio stations all over Pakistan including Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), Balochistan, Punjab, Sindh and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
He has also helped develop campus radio stations in universities in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan and developed curricula on broadcast curricula for them. As a freelance print journalist and researcher, he has extensively researched and written on media and human rights issues.
Aurangzeb Khan is a member of MMfD’s governing Board.
From 2012 to 2018, Sahar led the digital newsroom at Global Voices, reporting on 167 countries with a focus on online movements, misinformation and disinformation campaigns, and marginalised and misrepresented communities. Sahar worked for The New York Times, DawnNews TV, and Geo News TV in Pakistan from 2005-2011, reporting on elections, natural disasters, militancy, human smuggling, and kidney tourism. In 2009, she produced a documentary series on US-Pakistan relations called the Disposable Ally. Sahar was a John S. Knight Journalism fellow at Stanford University in 2010-11, where she trained in design-thinking, media entrepreneurship, and leadership; she remains active with the program as a mentor. In 2017, Sahar gave a talk at TEDxStanford called The Muslims You Cannot See that went viral. Sahar lives between the San Francisco Bay Area and Pakistan.