Dr. Ahmed Alwani is the founder and president of Newlines Institute for Strategy and Policy and its parent institution, Fairfax University of America (FXUA). He is a businessman based in northern Virginia with investments in the poultry, real estate, and education/training sectors.
Like many children of immigrants, Dr. Alwani wants to give back to his adopted country and has a desire to help improve the human condition. He earned his initial degree in mechanical engineering and began his career at a major engineering firm in Baltimore, Maryland, in the late 1980s, but Dr. Alwani’s heart has always been in educational innovation and helping people realize their professional potential. It is this passion that led him to become an entrepreneur after many years in industrial operations and management.
Driven by what he refers to as universal values of peace, character, development, stewardship, and community, Dr. Alwani invested his time and resources in the cause of academia, obtaining a doctorate in human resource development. Over the past decade, Dr. Alwani focused on establishing institutions of learning and research. FXUA and Newlines Institute represent his life’s work toward promoting prosperity at home in the United States and abroad through learning and research.
Dr. Alwani also serves on the boards of several nonprofit organizations, including the Washington Theological Consortium (a community of theological schools of diverse Christian traditions, with partners in education, spirituality, and interfaith dialogue) and Fairfax Educational Foundation. In 2018, Dr. Alwani became vice president of the International Institute of Islamic Thought, a Virginia-based nonprofit organization that focuses on educational advancement in Muslim societies, a legacy he inherited from his father, who co-founded the institute in the 1980s.
He has served as a member of the advisory board of the U.S. military’s Africa Command. Dr. Alwani has also been a board member of the higher education committee of the Loudoun County Economic Development Commission and a commissioner for the International Association for Continuing Education and Training. Dr. Alwani currently serves as vice president of York Foundation and Reston Investments, LLC, and as the president of Heritage Education, Inc.
Dr. Alwani earned his Ph.D. in Human Resource Development from Virginia Tech (2014) and has a Master’s in Engineering Administration from George Washington University (1990).