| Sabiha Rumani Malik | |
|---|---|
| Nationality | British |
| Work | |
| Practice | Sanghata Global |
| Projects | Frontier Market Scouts Programme |
Sabiha Rumani Malik is co-founder and president of Sanghata Global, an idea incubator for conceptualisation and implementation of models for alleviation of poverty in economically deprived areas. She is a Pakistan-born British architect, designer, and a psychotherapist.
Sanghata Global, a non-profit organization registered in the United Kingdom, has developed and founded the Frontier Market Scouts Program, in collaboration with the Monterey Institute of International Studies. The Program transforms compassionate and capable young professionals into talent scouts and investment managers serving the most promising, innovative enterprises in the low-income regions and deprived urban areas of the world. Co-founders of Sanghata include Scott Horton and Yuwei Shi.
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Sabiha Rumani Malik was born in Pakistan to a family related to Abul Kalam Azad, one of the foremost leaders of the Indian independence movement and a renowned scholar and poet who supported a united Indian identity. Continuing the family tradition of scholarship and creative activism, Sabiha’s father studied at north India’s famous centre of learning, the Oriental College, where he completed a degree in Persian and Arabic. He was one of a small group of idealist, highly educated young men led by Aligarh Muslim University alumnus Muhammad Dhawqi Shah, a journalist, political activist, and the head of the Sufi Chisti-Sabri spiritual order. In the late 1940s the group was discussing the future state of Pakistan with its future founder, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, their shared hope for a secular state upheld by an elected parliament, qualified executive, independent judiciary and a free press. The dream did not materialize because Muhammad Ali Jinnah died in 1948, barely a year after the birth of Pakistan. Thereafter, Sabiha’s father limited his activities to writing classical Urdu poetry and teaching Persian.
As a young girl Sabiha Rumani Malik was a protégé of the great Urdu poet Faiz Ahmad Faiz's wife, the writer and social activist Alys Faiz[1], and for a number of years Sabiha's poems were published in The Pakistan Times. Sabiha completed University of Cambridge International A-levels at the age of 14, and too young to gain admission to Barnard College at Colimbia University, she spent a year in New York attending lectures on art and sitting in the visitors’ gallery at the United Nations General Assembly sessions. When her family circumstances made it difficult for her to continue sculpture, painting, and architecture studies at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris, she transferred to an MPhil in art and design at Punjab University, and later also completed a BSc in clinical psychology and an MA in psychotherapy from De Montfort University in England.
At 16, she married Michel Aertsens, 37, the Rosey-educated son of a First World War hero. A year later, after the birth of her daughter India Knight, she separated from Michel Aertsens and worked as a translator at Petrofina - a Belgian oil company - to financially support her daughter and herself and continue her studies. She was close to her parents-in-law and her older friends included Elena and Antoine Allard[2], an artist, peace activist and founder of Stop War, and the art collector Léon Lambert[3][4].
After nine years of separation, Michel Aertsens agreed to a divorce and in 1975 Sabiha Rumani Malik, age 25, married Andrew Knight, 34, the newly appointed editor of The Economist. Sabiha was influential in The Economist’s turn to regular coverage of the Palestinian struggle for independence, and the establishment of the weekly ‘Asia’ section featuring developments in India, China and the Middle East. Sabiha and Andrew's home brought together wide-ranging connections that enlivened cross-disciplinary discourse and inevitably sparked the evolutionary developments within The Economist. Among the eclectic mix of people at their home were Isaiah and Irina Berlin, Alfred Brendel, Peter Carrington and his wife Iona, Hugo Young, Kay Graham, Netta and Arnold Weinstock, Richard Rogers, Ruth Rogers, Robert Armstrong, Helen Suzman, Yehudi Menuhin, John and Anya Sainsbury, Mohamed Hassanein Heikal, Woodrow Wyatt, Anthony Lester, George Scultz and Obie Schulz, and from Pakistan political figures Mumtaz Bhutto, Ghulam Mustafa Khar, Ghulam Mustafa Jatoi, future writer Tehmina Durrani, and the then captain of the Pakistan cricket team Imran Khan. Woodrow Wyatt, a friend and confidant of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher writes in his diaries that Prime Minister Thatcher would insist that Sabiha accompany Andrew to meetings at 10 Downing Street.
The marriage with Andrew Knight lasted 17 years, and Sabiha and Andrew had two daughters. In 1991, a few days after a divorce, Sabiha married a close family friend, the architect Norman Foster. The marriage lasted until 1995.
Sabiha Rumani Malik lives in London. She has three daughters: India Knight, Amaryllis Knight and Afsaneh Knight[5], and a stepson Jay Foster.
2009 - Founder.
Sanghata Global is an organisation for transformational change that designs and implements breakthrough conceptual models focused on serving humanity. It is a charitable company incorporated in the United Kingdom.
Sanghata Global accelerates poverty alleviation through wealth creation. By seeking talent and facilitating productive association between investors and enterprising people, Sanghata creates an ecosystem that channels management skills and investment funds to the most promising, innovative enterprises in low-income regions and in deprived urban areas.
One of Sanghata Global's main projects is the Frontier Market Scouts Programme in partnership with the Monterey Institute of International Studies[6] in the United States. Sanghata Global provides operational support to a number of key strategic partners.
2004 – Founder.
Diamonds for Humanity stands for the unrealized social and commercial potential of diamonds. In 2001, whilst designing jewelry for the De Beers-LVMH joint venture, Sabiha Rumani Malik became aware of the blood diamond wars and the military use of children and she founded Diamonds for Humanity in 2004. In addition to actively recognizing the “victims” of the industry, Diamonds for Humanity encourages the industry’s role as a steward of a historic asset base at the frontier of a world that calls for injustices to be addressed[7][8].
In 2005, Diamonds for Humanity won the support of Ibrahim Gambari, then the Under-Secretary General for Political Affairs at the United Nations, and of Olara Otunnu, an advocate for childrens' rights at the United Nations, the International League for Human Rights, the Africa-America Institute, Survival International, the Indigenous Landrights Fund and the Corporation for Economic Opportunity.
In 2005 a fundraising event was held at the Lincoln Center in support of the Africa America Institute.[9]
Director 1991-1995.
In 1991 Sabiha Rumani Malik joined Foster Associates - an architecture firm that had produced remarkable work in its early years but whose fortunes were in decline by the late 1980s. Sabiha’s contributions came at a turning point in the firm’s history. She supported the transformation of the firm into a partnership (Foster and Partners), and at a time when the firm had no major project on its books she worked strategically to confirm the firm’s position on the world stage by entering (without the knowledge of Norman Foster, the firm’s Chairman) the competition for the re-design of the Reichstag building in Berlin. She produced the design concept for the competition entry in consultation with the historian Wilhelm Vossenkuhl, professor emeritus at the University of Munich, the environmental engineer Norbert Kaiser, two young German architects and a fellow director. She also initiated the founding of Foster Asia with a small office in Hong Kong although at the time the firm did not have any work in Hong Kong or China. Her interventions helped to stabilise the firm and enable the start of the process that led to its defnintive place in architectural history and the exponential growth of its fortunes. By 2007, media reports[10] stated that Foster + Partners had been valued at over £300 million, and in May 2007 a stake in Foster + Partners[11] was sold to 3i, a recognized global leader in private equity “to generate new opportunities for the practice, particularly through the introduction to new markets for large scale infrastructure projects[12]”.