Founding Director of ConnectFutures - a female-led social enterprise founded in 2013 which delivers training and research around disinformation, extremism, anti-racism, hate and violence. She previously worked for over 15 years in the public sector as a senior member in a wide variety of local, national and pan-European policy-orientated policy and management work. She helped develop an operational accredited mentoring programme on behalf of statutory agencies and partners vulnerable to violent extremism during a two-year assignment with West Midlands Police Counter Terrorism Unit. Zubeda is a Clore Social Fellow (2014/15), an alumni of the IVLP programme (Dept of State, USA) and was invited to the White House Countering Violent Extremism (President Obama) summit in Washington in February 2015 as a result of the specialist work of ConnectFutures in developing community and schools based programmes. She currently sits as an Advisory Board Member on the PREPARE project/EU Horizon 2020, the European Commission’s Radicalisation Awareness Network (RAN) expert and is on the Board of Governors at Birmingham City University.Zubeda is a regular commentator in the media (BBC, ITV, Newsweek, Channel 4 News and other networks) and is the author of A tale of 3 cities: Public officials and senior representation in the NHS, University, Police and Local Authority (2016) and Formers and Families of violent extremists (2015). She is a Clore Social fellow 2014/15, an alumni of the IVLP programme (Dept of State, USA) and was invited to the the launch White House Countering Violent Extremism (President Obama) summit in Washington in February 2015. She graduated from the University of Manchester with a BA in Politics and Modern History and MA in Middle Eastern Studies.*Previous Board membership*: Halesowen College Board ); Accord Housing Association, West Midlands police (equality recruitment group) and Common Purpose.Additional qualifications: Prince 2 (Project Management) Accredited. Foundation and Practitioner. 2010
Listed skills include Leadership, Policy, Public Sector, Training, and 38 others.