Usman Iftikhar

Usman Iftikhar is a systems entrepreneur with 10+ years of diverse leadership experiences, passionate about utilising the power of entrepreneurship to collectively solve the global climate emergency and the global refugee crisis. He is the co-founder and CEO of Catalysr, a startup pre-accelerator in Australia, which empowers migrant and refugee entrepreneurs (migrapreneurs) to launch their own startups. In their first 5 years, Catalysr has supported 400 migrapreneurs launch 150 enterprises in Australia. Usman is also a Commercialisation Facilitator with the Australian Government’s Entrepreneurs’ Programme and the Head of Growth and Partnerships in newspace startup SpaceBase headquartered in New Zealand, with a mission to democratise access to space. 
 
Usman is a 2020 Stanford GSB alumnus, a 2019 Obama Leader, an EHF Fellow, WEF Global Shaper, 2019 Westpac Social Change Fellow, 2018 AMP Tomorrow Maker, Singularity University’s GSP 2017 Fellow, and a Young Social Pioneer alumnus at FYA. For his work, Usman was named the 2018 Commonwealth Young Person of the Year amongst 1.4 billion young people living in the 53 Commonwealth nations. He was also named a winner in the ‘Entrepreneurship’ category, for 40 under 40 Most Influential Asian-Australian Leadership Awards 2020.