About Mazen Mokhtar
Mazen Moein Mokhtar is an experienced CEO with 17 years as a senior executive in the IT industry and 11 years leading two prominent nonprofit organizations.
A Lifelong Activist
Mazen is the CEO of Baitulmaal, a four-star international humanitarian relief organization that provides life-saving, life-sustaining, and life-enriching aid to underserved populations worldwide, regardless of faith or nationality. Prior to heading Baitulmaal, Mazen was the Executive Director of the Muslim American Society (MAS), the most prominent American Muslim Youth and Development organization.
At the helm of these two significant nonprofits, Mazen established a strong track record in fostering organizational growth. His accomplishments at both organizations can be attributed to his creative, adaptive, and objective-driven approach to leadership, strong interpersonal skills for effective team building and stakeholder influence, and excellent oral, written, and presentation communication skills. Mazen is fluent in English, Arabic, and French.
Beyond his remarkable achievements in the Humanitarian sector, Mazen has also established himself as a dynamic entrepreneur in Information Technology (IT).
Work at Nonprofits Baitulmaal and MAS
Mazen Mokhtar’s responsibilities at Irving, Texas-based Baitulmaal include establishing the organization’s strategic direction and objectives, which he has done since joining the nonprofit in 2018. He is also responsible for leading the organization’s humanitarian work in 23 countries and the United States. In addition, as CEO, he recruits team members and helps with team building.
His financial management responsibilities include ensuring that Baitulmaal meets its budgeting requirements, revenue objectives, and humanitarian spending objectives each year. The success of the nonprofit’s mission is also achieved through the building of alliances. Mazen reaches out to other organizations in the same sector to build alliances, such as the American Humanitarian Forum, which was co-founded in 2019.
Mazen served as Executive Director of the Muslim American Society from 2013 to 2018. MAS is a dynamic charitable, religious, social, cultural, and educational organization with more than 40 chapters across the United States. The organization offers unique programs and services that seek to better the individual and, in turn, the greater society by imparting Islamic knowledge, promoting community service, engaging in political activism, and more.
He also worked on West Point’s “Winning the Peace” program, which was developed in 2004 as an interdisciplinary course combining sociology, history, religion, and personal ethics. The program aims to make future officers more sensitive to cultural and religious differences.
A Sought-After, Frequent Lecturer
Mazen is a frequent lecturer on youth, Islamic, and interfaith topics. He has been invited to speak and has delivered numerous lectures at universities, including Princeton University, New York University (NYU), Boston University, Rutgers University, New Jersey Institute of Technology, and St. Francis College.
His Successful Career in IT
Prior to his work with nonprofits, Mazen had a remarkable career in IT, which was the focus of his studies at the university. He ran a successful computer consulting firm he founded in 1996. Under Mazen’s leadership, New Jersey-based MindCraft provided IT and business consulting services to companies that ranged from Fortune 500 to startups. His bespoke clientele included Merrill Lynch, Merck & Co, Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield, Independence Blue Cross, First Genetic Trust (FGT), Telcordia Technologies, Inc. (formerly Bellcore), Lucent Technologies (formerly Bell Labs), Panasonic Information and Networking Technologies Laboratory – Matsushita, and Concordance Technologies.
Mazen Mokhtar formed MindCraft following his success as a Software Engineer with several leading companies, including International Business Machines (IBM), AT&T Bell Labs, and AT&T Consumer Services.
Education
Mazen received his B.Sc. in Computer Science and Engineering at the Whiting School of Engineering at Johns Hopkins University in 1989. He is a PMI Certified Project Management Professional (PMP) and ITIL v3.0 Certified from the Information Technology Infrastructure Library Foundation.
Authorship
In 1991, Mazen co-authored “Heuristic Combinatorial Optimization by Simulated Darwinian Evolution: A Polynomial Time Algorithm for the Traveling Salesman Problem,” published in Biological Cybernetics. The piece offers an ingenious solution to the Traveling Salesman Problem (TSP), a well-known puzzle in which a “salesman” must visit a list of locations once and return to the beginning point while traveling the least distance. Instead of testing every conceivable route (which would take years for a large number of cities), Mazen and his co-authors employ a Darwinian-inspired strategy. They replicated a “survival of the fittest” approach by iterative refining, combining, and adjusting solutions to discover the best path. The method works well, even for more significant problems, because it focuses on more intelligent, faster calculations rather than brute force.
Personal Life
Mazen resides in Irving, Texas, with his wife, Soulafa Amer, and their six children. They will celebrate their 30th wedding anniversary in 2025. Next year will also mark another milestone as Mazen works toward completing his MBA.
Born in Alexandria, Egypt, Mazen’s father raised him to be charitable and give what he can regularly. He has supported philanthropic causes all his life, donating weekly to worthy and deserved endeavors.
He loves history, philosophy, puzzles, reading, chess, and traveling.
