Bashar Qasem is President and Chief Executive Officer of Azzad Asset Management and is the firm’s principal shareholder. Mr. Qasem serves as Chairman and director on the board of trustees of the Azzad Mutual Funds. He is also an Investment Advisor Representative and sits on the investment committee at Azzad Asset Management, Inc.Having founded Azzad in 1997, he is responsible for assisting clients with their investment policy statements, retirement and college planning and other financial needs. Mr. Qasem also assists small businesses with establishing their qualified retirement plans (such as 401K and profit-sharing plans) and organizations with their charitable giving needs. He is a frequent speaker on faith-based socially responsible investing at conferences in the United States and abroad.Mr. Qasem graduated from the University of Jordan with a BS in Computer Engineering. He also has post-graduate work in Business Administration from Southeastern University in Washington DC.Mr. Qasem has held Series 6 (Investment Company Products/Variable Life Contracts Representative Exam) and 26 (Investment Company (Mutual Funds) Principal) licenses. He currently holds Series 65 license (Uniform Investment Advisor). He earned his CSAA® (Certified Shari’ah Adviser and Auditor) designation in 2009 and is a member of AAOIFI (Accounting and Auditing Organization for Islamic Financial Institutions).Under Mr. Qasem’s leadership, Azzad developed and pioneered an automated approach to its faith-based, socially responsible screening process. The company also developed an approach to managing strategically allocated, broadly diversified portfolios of individual models for socially conscious investors based on Modern Portfolio Theory. He also designed the first Waqf trust document agreement to be used with private foundations in the United States.