The AIChE Foundation — the philanthropic arm of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE) — has named S. Shariq Yosufzai as its chair. Yosufzai, who serves as vice president of global diversity for Chevron, will lead the engineering society’s fundraising to support global initiatives in education, safety, and workplace diversity and inclusion.
Originally from Dhaka, now the capital of Bangladesh, Yosufzai has worked at Chevron for more than 40 years, where he has had the opportunity to serve as president of several successful global businesses. Growing up, Yosufzai knew he did not want to be a physician; his family already had nine of them.
“I knew I had to follow a different path,” Yosufzai said. “I have always been a realist and a pragmatist, and those qualities certainly lend themselves to chemical engineering. The field is grounded in gritty, uncompromising reality, but there is also another side to chemical engineering, one that breaks free of the stereotypes and elevates the field from the every day to the sublime. That is the innate need we as chemical engineers must have to reshape our world, improve it and make it work just a little bit better. To that end, I enrolled at Texas A&M University and became a chemical engineer.”
Throughout Yosufzai’s career, AIChE has been an instrumental part of his success, and giving back to the profession of chemical engineering has been a very meaningful aspect of his life.
“Over the years, I have had the incredible opportunity to serve on several important committees and initiatives, including recently as vice chair of the AIChE Foundation’s Doing a World of Good campaign,” Yosufzai said. “The Doing a World of Good campaign funds projects chemical engineers have identified as crucial to advancing the good works of the profession.”
Through the Doing a World of Good campaign, the foundation successfully launched the Undergraduate Process Safety Learning Initiative, a global educational effort to ensure every chemical engineering graduate has a working knowledge of process safety. This initiative is being funded by companies such as Dow, Chevron, LyondellBasell, DuPont, Eastman, Univar, etc. and includes more than 100 industry supporters across 300 universities and colleges.
According to Yosufzai, to be the new chair of the AIChE Foundation is not only an honor but also reflects his personal values of selfless service that were instilled in him at Texas A&M.
“I believe the work AIChE and the AIChE Foundation performs is vital in ensuring we develop as professionals as well as attract the best and brightest diverse talent,” Yosufzai said. “On a grand scale, the AIChE Foundation has the convening power to bring the best and brightest minds from academia, nongovernmental organizations and companies together to help create innovative solutions to address our world’s biggest problems. Using the systematic application of chemical engineering principles and processes, we can use this power to solve our greatest challenges, whether it’s cleaner drinking water, nonproliferation of diseases or sustainable infrastructure development.”
Yosufzai emphasized there must be a robust pipeline of diverse and talented chemical engineers going forward. This is paramount for creating the breakthroughs needed to meet the societal issues of the future.
“Diversity and inclusion have been a passion of mine throughout my career, and collaborating with groundbreaking companies to find ways to inspire future generations of chemical engineers is especially energizing,” he said. “I believe the AIChE Foundation is well positioned to meet this challenge.”
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For more about the AIChE Foundation, visit www.aiche.org/giving or call (646) 495-1342