For over 9 years Abdulrahman Rafiq, or AR has impacted countless organizations and individuals by providing professional mentoring to advising fledgling businesses and non-profits in Silicon Valley, all the while pursuing a professional career as part of the hardware engineering development team at fortune 500, Cisco Systems.
To colleagues and friends a like he is known as a social networker and connector on steroids. AR has an uncanny ability to identify resources and create unique connections between people and technologies, to the end of being the enabler, or as some have refered him as “the glue” between engineering functions, business processes, community initiatives and people in general.
AR has Bachelors and Masters degrees in Physics from U.C. Santa Barbara and U.C. Riverside, and also he’s taken a series of short Solar Technology courses at Santa Clara University, that is in addition to in-formal degrees in Entrepreneurship, Startups, and Organization management from the Silicon Valley University of Experience.
AR The Service Provider ….
AR is the CEO and founder at Inspurate System, a micro-multinational providing complete cost effective IT, Web & Mobile Development and Design services, and Strategic Consulting to small and medium enterprise.
AR The Entrepreneur …
AR is the founder of Pristine Signals, a niche community portal providing Electronic Designers with cloud based engineering automation tools, while at the same time enabling designers to crowdsource rating and review of open source industry standardized simulation models. Pristine Signals is positioned as the Facebook for EDA and Semiconductor professionals.
AR was founder and COO at Wadiwallah.com. Wadiwallah was as a platform for the community side of Silicon Valley, allowing Wadiwalleh, or denizens of Silicon Valley, the people who live and work in this loosely-defined area, to be people.
The Silicon Valley is a community of communities; diverse, both in ethnicities and faiths, but also in personalities, technologies (hey! we’re geeks, one and all), and professions, if not industries. But until this point in space-time no one, and I mean no one, has addressed or even attempted to address this group of people–so often talked about as leaders in technolog–as a community.
With Wadiwallah.com, we intended to try and change that. We wanted to present a more complete picture of Silicon Wadi society, cultures and life–and, almost more importantly, provide space for Wadiwalleh to be people; a place where they can congregate, across communities, and talk with each other, exchange views, and come together as a larger community–the community of the denizens of Silicon Valley.
AR The Professional …
AR spent over 8 years at Fortune 500 Cisco Systems, a company that develops technology powering the global marketplace. AR was recruited at age 24 to work on developing the hardware for the Cataylst 6500 router and switch, a $4B product. Over the years, AR grew from a junior grade PCB design engineer to supporting and managing critical design projects ranging from ASIC package design for the IP Phone, ASIC and FPGA ballout optimization process flow, and Signal Integrity simulation and model validation quality control and process automation.
AR The Community Organizer …
AR has a strong passion for community engagement and has been a committed volunteer to the non-profit community for over 10 years. He has been active in volunteering and supporting grassroots entrepreneurship, emergency disaster relief, K-12 science education outreach, and several philanthropic causes.
For over 8 years AR has held several volunteer roles as part of the Executive Committee in Marketing, Event Logistics, Community Outreach, and Mentorship at OPEN Silicon Valley. To date AR has organized over 10 world class business and leadership conferences boasting 650 plus participants, with 3 conferences being exclusively tailored to women professionals and entrepreneurs.
In addition, on October 8, 2005 AR was the principle founder of South Asia Relief, or SA Relief. The underlying vision of SA Relief is: To create a platform enabling seamless coordination between relief providers and donors for disaster relief management in South Asia. SA Relief is a community driven platform supporting relief work by multiple providers at ground zero. In 2010 SA Relief in collaboration with relief partners in Pakistan raised over $170,000 in relief aid for flood victims.
AR has also been involved in K-12 science education outreach. He held key leadership roles at iQUEST, an education outreach NSF funded project at the Materials Research Lab at U.C. Santa Barbara, and also acted as lead facilitator for the science program at the GRANADA school in Santa Clara, California.
AR The Political Animal …
AR supported the National Finance Committee at the DNC for President Barack Obama’s 2008 Election Campaign, he also campaigned for Attorney General Kamala Harris in the 2010 California elections. Additionally he continues, through multiple social media channels to engage as a political activist and social reformer for sustainable grassroots change around the world, with specific focus on Pakistan and the United States.
Additionally AR can be found blogging on Socio-Political issues at Siliconstani, and e-picketing against internet censorship at Pakistan.Wikia.com.
