Tasmina Ahmed-Sheikh Keynote Speaker

Ms Tasmina Ahmed-Sheikh is a Scottish politician, former member of the SNP 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 also served as a board member of the Yes Scotland campaign in the independence referendum of 2014 and 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.

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. 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 is a vocal critic of Brexit believing that it is resulting in British insularity rather than a greater international perspective.

Currently Ms Ahmed-Sheikh is working in television as a producer and presenter and writes a weekly political column in The National.

Her specialist subjects include leadership, women in business and politics as well as social progress for ethnic minority communities. She can also speak with knowledge on television and the sub continent film industry and retains her interest and acute observations on European and international affairs including specialist knowledge of the European Free Trade Association (EFTA). Ms Ahmed-Sheikh is a popular speaker at formal Burns Suppers, and has delivered the “Reply from the Lassies” in the House of Commons, European Parliament and Council of Europe.