The Board of Management of the HIGH POTENTIAL NETWORK is delighted to welcome Mr. Ashfaq Ishaq, PhD, FRSA Executive Director of the International Child Art Foundation in Washington - as a patron of our Network.
The Board of Management of the HIGH POTENTIAL NETWORK is delighted to
welcome Mr. Ashfaq Ishaq, PhD, FRSA Executive Director of the International
Child Art Foundation in Washington - as a patron of our Network. Dr. Ashfaq
Ishaq founded ICAF in 1997 and serves as its Executive Director. Today,
ICAF is recognized as a leading cultural and educational institution promoting
creativity and cooperation through the arts. Dr. Ishaq's diverse and distinguished
professional background as an author, educator, entrepreneur and international
civil servant makes him a unique civil society leader. He started his career
at the World Bank, in research and financing of small industry projects.
Later he joined the faculty of economics at the George Washington University
and was occasional guest lecturer at the U.S. Foreign Service Institute.
In 1986, he started a project development company that played an important
role in promoting private provision of public services in emerging economies.
Dr. Ishaq is a multidisciplinary thinker with a global perspective. His
writings are recommended readings at several universities for courses in
economic development, business and international politics. His papers have
appeared in diverse publications, including Finance & Development, the Institutional
Investor and the Journal of Conflict Resolution. He is co-author of Success
in Small & Medium Scale Enterprises, Oxford University Press, 1987. In 1998,
he launched the ChildArt magazine and serves as the Editor. Dr. Ishaq has
chaired and organized several business and technical conferences. In 2000-2001,
he was a featured speaker at the State of the World Forum (New York City);
the World Summit on Media for Children (Thessaloniki, Greece); the National
Mental Health Conference (San Juan, Puerto Rico); Children and Young People
in a Changing World (Agrigento, Italy); and Education Technology 2001 (Arlington,
Virginia).
In 1999, he launched the "Children's Creativity Symposium," which is held
every four years in Washington, DC. In 2000, he started the "Washington
Forum on the Future of Our Children" to strengthen local efforts through
collaborative partnerships. To involve children in the celebration of the
new millennium, he developed and organized a global art competition program
in which over one million children in the United States and 85 nations participated.
In 1998, he organized the first-ever national children's art festival in
the United States. In 1999, he organized the world's largest international
children's festival, held on The National Mall in Washington, DC. The very
first award he received was for a painting he made when he was eight. In
1999, he was invited to become a Fellow of the Royal Society of Art (RSA),
London. In 2001, the Peter F. Drucker Foundation awarded him the Hesselbein
Community Innovation Fellowship. He received a Ph.D. (Economics) from the
George Washington University. He received a M.P.A. (Public Administration)
from the University of Punjab and a B.A. (Economics, Statistics) from Government
College, Lahore, Pakistan. His current professional interests include the
study of creativity, transforming the Internet into a creativity platform,
and preparing children to be creative leaders so they could lead us into
a better world.