Hello! My name is Sheeza. In 2013, I started interviewing social entrepreneurs and one need came up in every single conversation: funding. So I used my savings, found a developer, and together we built a crowdfunding platform for social entrepreneurs. That step was the first of many of unlocking capital for enterprises prioritising fair and ethical trade. Crowdfunding is a powerful tool for social enterprises; however, I realised it doesn't equip them to navigate a broken and rigged system designed for the few. Thus, alongside UpEffect, I worked on various new economy and systems change projects aligned with Islamic economics, which culminated in Saathi Capital.

Saathi (ساتھی) translates to partner in Urdu. This name reflects the central role of collaboration in my work: tools that improve funding success rates for underserved founders, Islamic finance advocacy, educational programmes, consulting, developing Zakat-inspired funds and ethical funder frameworks, convenings that shift how wealth holders think about SME financing and now Raf'a (رفع), an equity investment vehicle grounded in Islamic trade ethics.

I also co-organise an annual event, the Islamic Impact Investing Summit, bringing together wealth holders, managers, practitioners, impact and faith-based investors, economists, philanthropists, academics and social enterprises and discuss how to meaningfully redistribute capital through Islamic impact investing.