Pakistani Canadian entrepreneur Obaid Ahmed was a recipient of the 2015 Top 40 under 40 Award for local business professionals by the Ottawa Business Journal. He has recently been nominated for MAX Gala’s Entrepreneur of the Year Award, for outstanding Muslim Canadian entrepreneurs. (Vote Here Deadline March 5th)

Muslim Link interviewed Obaid about the rewards and challenges he experiences as an entrepreneur. 

Shelina Merani has many accomplishments to speak of.

She once spearheaded an award-winning photography project that was praised for giving a human face to public service workers.  

She is a founder of Muslim Presence, a network which she says aims to promote universal values and active citizenship.

And lately, she's been performing standup comedy in Ottawa and Quebec.

On November 4th, Mohamed Islam, 31, was awarded with Crime Prevention Ottawa's 2013 Youth Worker Award in a ceremony at City Hall. Crime Prevention Ottawa (CPO) is an organization which aims to reduce crime and enhance community safety through collaborative evidence-based crime prevention strategies. Mohamed Islam is a Youth Worker with the Boys and Girls Club of Ottawa and is the coordinator of the Somali Youth Support Project, a program run out of the Pinecrest-Queensway Community Health Centre.

You may not know her name but you have probably seen her.

In 2011, Rasha Al-Katta's smiling face was visible across the city as part of the United Way's campaign to raise awareness about the organization. Volunteers like Ms. Al-Katta were asked to pose for the posters instead of models.

“I thought it would be fun. I didn't even know that it would be splattered everywhere. I thought it would just be in the newspaper but then people started texting me ”˜Rasha we saw your poster in Rideau or at Place D'Orleans!'. It was pretty exciting,” Ms. Al-Katta shared.

It was a defining moment for the growing Muslim community as members of disparate organisations and associations came together to celebrate the achievements of their own.

The Jan. 19 event, hosted by the Muslim Coordinatin

g Council (MCC) and the Ottawa Muslim Association (OMA), honoured 20 Ottawa Muslim recipients of the Queen's Diamond Jubilee Award.

“This is the first time in Ottawa that 42 Muslim organizations joined hands in a community-wide celebration of our contributions to Canada,” the MCC said in a statement issued after the event.

Founder and former longtime president of the Ottawa Muslim Women's Organization, Nazira Tareen, is among 15 residents who will be inducted into the new Order of Ottawa during a formal ceremony at City Hall on Nov. 22.

The Muslim Coordinating Council of the National Capital Region is grateful that nine Muslims in the region are receiving the Queen's Diamond Jubilee Award on the recommendation of the council.

To mark the Queen of England's sixty years on the throne, a commemorative medal is being bestowed on deserving Canadians across the country.

Among those who have already received the Queen's Diamond Jubilee Medal is Mohammed Azhar Ali Khan, a retired civil servant and refugee judge who is also a journalist and founder of the Muslim Coordinating Council of the National Capital Region (MCC-NCR).

Sheema Khan, whose monthly columns appear in the Globe and Mail, and who is the founder of the Canadian Council on American-Islamic Relations, was also bestowed with the honour.

With a background in psychology and a PhD in neuroscience, management didn't initially figure among Nashwa Irfan's career goals.

“I would have never gone into management if it were not for my father's encouragement,” says Dr. Irfan.

Her father the late Dr. Muhammad Irfan, a professor in physics at St. John's University was certainly right about Dr. Irfan's talent as a manager. This year she received not one, but two prestigious awards for her work as Health Canada's Associate Director of its Marketed Pharmaceuticals and Medical Devices Bureau.

The profile of Muslim women in Canada received a boost with the nomination of one of their own for the Order of Canada, the country's highest award.

Alia Hogben, the Executive Director of the Canadian Council for Muslim Women is among 70 Canadians who have been selected for the prize this year.

The Order of Canada, created in 1967, recognizes brilliant accomplishments that honour Canada. This will be the second time in history that a Muslim woman has received the award.

The late Lila Fahlman of Edmonton, who founded the CCMW in 1982 was the first female Muslim winner of the award.