Tasmina Ahmed-Sheikh Keynote Speaker

Tasmina Ahmed-Sheikh OBE is the former Member of UK Parliament for Ochil and South Perthshire.

She was the SNP’s Westminster Spokesperson for International Trade and Deputy Shadow Leader of the House of Commons

Ms Tasmina Ahmed-Sheikh is a Scottish politician and keynote speaker on topics including leadership, gender and diversity.  When elected to the House of Commons in 2015, she became the first woman of colour in Scottish history, to be elected from Scotland to any parliament – Westminster, Scottish or European.

By that time she had already pursued a successful legal career in Scotland and in 2014 was awarded an OBE from the late Queen Elizabeth for services to business and the Asian community. She served as a board member of the Yes Scotland campaign in the independence referendum of 2014 and was board member and chair of the International and Commercial Development Committee of City of Glasgow College. She is an alumna of the US State Department International Visitors Leadership Programme. She is an alumna of both Edinburgh and Strathclyde universities and has participated in both Oxford and Cambridge Union debates.

She has also won Scottish Asian Businesswoman of the year in Scotland and Asian Woman Professional of the year at the prestigious Asian Women of Achievement Awards in London.

In her time in the House of Commons, Ms Ahmed-Sheikh was elected a member of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe and also became a board member of the Westminster Foundation for Democracy and served as a UK Parliament Representative on the Council of Europe’s Legal Affairs and Human Rights committee. She was Honorary President of the British Youth Council.

Currently Ms Ahmed-Sheikh is working in television as a producer and presenter.

Her specialist subjects include leadership, women in business and politics as well as social progress for ethnic minority communities, government relations, diplomacy and public speaking.

Apart from her business career, Ms Ahmed-Sheikh has starred in numerous television and film roles in the Asian Subcontinent, her most prominent serials played on Pakistani television to an audience of 100 million, as well as being viewed on-line and around the world. She holds many awards for her film career. Her latest film, as producer, SAACH, was the first ever Lollywood film to be set and filmed in Glasgow and it premiered in 2020.