Zahra Qureshi

Biography

Zahra Qureshi started her career as an accountant, completing her CPA, CMA designation. After gaining some valuable experience in accounting and corporate finance, she shifted gears to try out entrepreneurship and launched Optinum Professional Corp. in 2018 to provide finance and business planning support to other entities and entrepreneurs. Her track record includes supporting strong business strategy development, setting up new finance systems, many successful fundraising efforts, and impact measurement techniques. Zahra expanded her expertise into social enterprise and completed Canada’s first certification for professionals specifically serving the social enterprise sector, Community Development for the Common Good. In August 2020, she also launched Social Venture Circuit, a non-profit organization supporting the social enterprise community within the Region of Peel. In November 2020, she led this organization for hosting the first local Social Enterprise Day conference and is now leading their program design to continue to support for-profit and non-profit social enterprises. She also provides coaching and program design support in social enterprise and finance for EDGE at Sheridan College, ICUBE UTM (University of Toronto), and an entrepreneurship program for young women launched by Common Good Solutions.