Professor Abdur Rasjid Skinner
Advisory Board Member
Professor Abdur Rasjid Skinner is a Consultant Clinical Psychologist and Jungian Psychotherapist with over 40 years experience of dealing with a variety of psychological problems. He is a Chartered Psychologist and Associate Fellow of the British Psychological Society. He has worked with others over many years developing the clinical application of an Islamic understanding of the Self. He is a Visiting Professor of Clinical Psychology at the University of Karachi. He teaches at the Cambridge Muslim College and is a visiting lecturer on the Clinical Psychology course at The University of Sheffield. He has presented at numerous conferences nationally and internationally on Islamic Psychology.
Publications:
Skinner, R. (2010). An Islamic approach to psychology and mental health. Mental Health, Religion and Culture.13(6), 547-551.
Kaplick, P. and Skinner, R. (2017). The evolving Islam and psychology movement. European Psychologist. 22(3), 198-204.
Skinner, R. and Kaplick, P. (2017). Cultural shift in mental illness: a comparison of stress responses in World War 1 and the Vietnam war. J. Royal Soc. Of Medicine Open. 8(12), 1-5.
Skinner, R. ((1989) 2018), Traditions, paradigms and basic concepts in Islamic psychology. J.Relig. Health.
Myira Khan
Advisory Board Member
Myira is a BACP accredited counsellor, who provides face to face and online counselling to adults, couples and young people. She is a qualified supervisor who provides clinical supervision to trainee and experienced counsellors and psychotherapists. She is also the founder of the Muslim Counsellor and Psychotherapist Network and is trained in Islamic Psychology and Islamic Psychotherapy. Myira also presents and facilitates counselling training, CPD workshops and conferences; teaches and assesses counselling trainees at the Leicester Centre for Psychodynamic Counselling, which she helped set-up, and is on the BACP Board of Governors.
Dr Ahmed Hankir
Advisory Board Member
Dr Ahmed Hankir is Senior Research Fellow of the Bedfordshire Centre for Mental Health in association with Cambridge University and Specialty Trainee in Psychiatry with Leeds and York Partnership NHS Foundation Trust. Dr Hankir’s research interests include global mental health, Muslim mental health and pioneering and evaluating innovative programmes that challenge mental health related stigma and Islamophobia. Dr Hankir was former Chair of the Muslim Engagement and Development Leeds Working Group. Dr Hankir was headhunted by senior members of the American Psychiatric Association to co-edit the first textbook of its kind on Islamophobia and Psychiatry with Professor Rania Awaad at Stanford University who presented her research on Muslim mental health to former President of the United States of America Barack Obama at the White House (due for publication by Springer USA in December 2018). Dr Hankir is the author of the Wounded Healer programme which is an innovative method of teaching that blends the performing arts with psychiatry. The Wounded Healer has been integrated into the medical school curriculum of four UK universities and has been adapted into a documentary by film makers from the London College of Communication and screened at the World Psychiatric Association World Congress in Berlin. Dr Hankir has presented the Wounded Healer to over 65,000 people in 13 countries on five continents throughout the globe and has delivered keynote addresses with Nobel Prize Laureates and Ted speakers in international conferences worldwide. Dr Hankir has worked extensively with university Islamic societies throughout the United Kingdom and Ireland. In 2017 Dr Hankir helped to organize the first ever Muslim mental health conference in Ireland. Dr Hankir collaborated with the Federation of Student Islamic Societies and conducted the first ever intervention study to challenge mental health related stigma in the Muslim community (the FOSIS Birmingham and Dublin studies). Dr Hankir is the recipient of numerous prestigious awards including the 2013 Royal College of Psychiatrists (RCPsych) Foundation Doctor of the Year, the 2017 RCPsych Morris Markowe Prize and he has been shortlisted for the RCPsych Core Trainee of the Year (winner to be announced in November 2018). Dr Hankir was twice shortlisted for the RCPsych Psychiatric Communicator of the Year for his work on the Wounded Healer project. In recognition of his services to academic psychiatry, Dr Ahmed Hankir was appointed Yvonne YuRichco Professor of Psychiatry at the Carrick Institute for Graduate Studies in Cape Canaveral, USA.
Sheikh Saeed Nasser
Advisory Board Member
Sheikh Saeed Nasser was born in Yemen and came to the UK at the age of 13. He lost his sight when he was 2 years old and was educated in the UK and works as an integrative counsellor and a clinical supervisor in private practice. He has previously worked for the NHS as a member of a psychotherapy team dealing with trauma, anxiety and depression. He is also a bereavement counsellor volunteering for Cruse Bereavement Service for the last 5 years. For the last 17 years he has worked as the interpreter and translator in the Social Services Department of Sandwell Council. He is a founding member of the Yemeni Community Association in Sandwell, which is one of the leading Yemeni community organisations in the UK. He chairs its cultural centre and volunteers as an Imam in the mosque which is a centre that delivers religious, spiritual, educational, cohesion and community activities for all members of the local community. He sits on a number of boards and committees in his local area. Finally, he has links with schools and organisations for people experiencing sight loss in Yemen and through the Yemeni Community Association helps to raise money to help blind children with their education.
Atallah FitzGibbon
Advisory Board Member
After 12 years of working in the voluntary and public sector in the UK followed by 23 years experience in humanitarian aid work, Atallah has worked at senior management and director level managing international programmes, spearheading organisational and performance improvement and leading on strategy and policy development. At Islamic Relief Worldwide, Atallah has worked as Programmes Director, Performance Improvement Manager, Head of Policy & Strategy and is now their Faith Partnerships Advisor. Within this role Atallah is involved in supporting research and programming addressing the psychosocial needs of disaster survivors and forced migrants. In addition to his work at IRW and being on the advisory board at Inspirited Minds, Atallah is director of Reflection Network, an agency that provides cultural awareness training and trains Muslim communities on engaging with other communities using the various resources that have been developed, including a course on Spirituality in Islam. Atallah is also a board member of the Joint Learning Initiative on faith and Local Communities (JLI) and Chair of the Zawiya Trust in Birmingham which manages a range of community based activities for youth and adults. Atallah has led the development of Islamic Relief’s last two global strategies between 2009-21, leading on the drive to improve faith literacy and localisation within IRW’s work and the development of IRW’s conceptual framework and theory of change on human development. As Global Advocacy Manager Atallah also focussed heavily on refugee protection and co-chair’s the JLI Learning Hub on Forced Migration. IRW also has strong advocacy priorities on gender justice, climate and change.
Shafeek Caunhye
Advisory Board Member
Shafeek is a graduate in Management and Psychology with over a decade experience working in Psychiatry. His experience includes acute inpatient care, outpatient care and addictions therapy with management experience in the turn around of large established healthcare organisations and start up of new clinics nationally. He is passionate about Mental Health and youth development.
Huma Khan
Advisory Board Member
Huma graduated with a BA Hons in Business Administration, has a qualification in Neuro-linguistic programming and is currently completing her MSc in Occupational Business Psychology. Huma has 20 years of commercial experience during which she worked for blue-chip organisations such as Danone, Birds Eye and Nectar Loyalty (part of Sainsbury’s), as well as the global charity World Wildlife Fund. She has managed client P&L’s in excess of £150M across multiple sectors and won best supplier awards from Sainsbury’s and Nisa. Her key areas of expertise lie in Sales, Strategy, Customer Relationship Development, Profitable Revenue Growth, Negotiation, and Business Development. Huma has cultivated a career of breadth across key functional disciplines including sales, shopper marketing, supply chain, fundraising and general management, she has also worked across several industries including Field Marketing, FMCG, Private Equity, Data-driven Marketing, Not for Profit and Management Consultancy. Based on personal experiences, Huma founded SalesPsych Ltd in 2018, a psychology based commercial consultancy with one mission in mind ‘to create high performing, happy and healthy people and organisations’. SalesPsych provides consultancy, training and coaching that is grounded in scientific research and evidence-based practice, using the power of Positive Psychology to help people and businesses deliver better results. Huma is passionate about mental health and well-being and breaking down the cultural taboos associated with getting people the help that they need, when they need it most.
Aisha Akhtar
Advisory Board Member
Aisha qualified as a Solicitor in 2009 and has practiced Litigation and Social Housing since. She has worked for local authorities in Manchester and the Midlands and has spent 7 years at a private law firm in West London. She currently works in-house at Network Homes in Wembley. She has a keen interest in the mental health field developed from her work in social housing and believes there should be no barrier to people being able to access help and wants to help eradicate stigma attached to mental illness. She enjoys travelling, is an avid reader and practices regular meditation.
Rehanah Sadiq
Advisory Board Member
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Saghar Roya
Advisory Board Member
Saghar is a qualified solicitor and a Partner in the City law firm, Devonshires Solicitors. She works within the field of Property Finance and specialises in Social Housing Finance, an area where she is recognised as a Tier 1 practitioner in the Legal 500. As part of her role, Saghar helps social housing providers attain the necessary funding required to build more affordable homes nationally in order to address the shortfall of affordable homes for those in most need. Saghar is of Afghan ethnicity and came to the UK at the age of 5, a fundamental element which has helped her grasp and understand the cultural and social challenges that are present in society. Saghar is a current volunteer with Mobile Minds and has previously volunteered with many charities and non-profit organisations, including Childline and TimeBank. Saghar is passionate about helping others and firmly believes that a community cannot progress together if it does not understand the societal challenges they face individually and collectively.
Rofu Miah
Advisory Board Member
Rofu is a Chartered Certified Accountant working in the City as a Group Tax Analyst for a FTSE 100 Company. He has a Bachelors (Hons) degree in Accounting & Finance and has been working his way up the career ladder from a grassroot level. His line of experience includes working and volunteering with Charities & Social Enterprises across East London; particularly with young people from disadvantaged backgrounds. He is very passionate about promoting mental health wellbeing and aims to achieve this with his tenure at Inspirited Minds.
