Maqsood Ahmed OBE - Trustee

Maqsood Ahmed OBE is currently CEO of CDE Acumen as a private consultant on Government relations, strategic advice, community engagement, campaign management and communications strategies, capability building, research and evaluation. His focus areas of work are countering violent extremism (CVE), interfaith, community cohesion and social development.

Maqsood was appointed Director of Welfare & Community Development at Muslim Hands in 2012. He has been instrumental in this work within prisons and Interfaith forums on which he has been invited as guest speaker on many occasions. He is consulted on countering violent extremism through his contacts within the Home Office. He is passionate about community engagement and cohesion amongst all diverse members of our society. He has built up a very impressive contact list who hold him in high regard and can rely on his strategic advice. He has an aptitude for capacity building especially around his work with prisoners as his dealings with Imams now stretches the breadth of the UK.

Maqsood Ahmed was appointed as Adviser to the Home Office in the Faith Communities Unit in 2003.  One of the primary roles of this Unit was to engage with all Faith communities.  Maqsood thus worked closely with Muslim and other faith communities on cohesion and inter-faith work.  This Unit transferred to the Communities and Local Government in May 2006 and is now called the Preventing Extremism Division.

He was awarded an OBE for his groundbreaking work as the first Muslim Advisor to HM Prison Service.  He opened up Prison Chaplaincies to reflect the ethnic representation in many Prisons.  Most prisons now have chaplains of all religions who provide pastoral care to prisoners.

Maqsood’s background lies in working on anti-poverty, inter-faith and racial equality in a career which includes working in the Leicester Law Centre and the Watford Borough Council for 15 years. Other appointments include time spent as a Trustee and founding member of Drug, Alcohol Awareness Project in Ealing West London (DAAP) and Executor and founding member of the Leicester Central Mosque and Islamic Centre. Maqsood is passionate about the use of drug and alcohol abuse and its effects on the BME community throughout the UK and on faith groups.

Maqsood has been a Fellow of the Faith and Civil Society of Anglia Ruskin University Cambridge (2006 – 2009) and is currently a Fellow of the University of London, Goldsmiths’ College. He is passionate about inter faith dialogue and is a pioneer of the Muslim/ Jewish dialogue initiative. He has also been instrumental in holding the first ever Imams Rabbis conference in 2006 in London. This was followed in Manchester with Muslim/Jewish women dialogue event. He is also one of the Patrons of Abraham Fund UK, a Charity which works to increase Palestine/Jewish engagement.

Maqsood was awarded The Muslim News Al-Barooni Award for Excellence in 2008 for his work with the Muslim Community and his Inter-faith work in the UK and internationally.

He was a Senior Advisor to the Department of Communities and Local Government; an Advisor at the UK Cross Government Unit of Research Information and Communication Unit (RICU) which sits within the Home Office.

He holds a master’s degree in Sociology “Islam in Contemporary Society” from the University of Warwick.

He is one of the Founding Trustee of 9/11 London Project, and educational work to mark 10 years’ anniversary of the 9/11 (2005 -2010).

He is Trustee of UK Prison Reform Trust (2018 – present). He also attends Community Chaplaincy Association, UK meetings.