Waqar Abbas

Waqar stepped into his role as director of strategic programs in 2025 with a goal: “Make the region more vibrant so more people can live here and make it successful.”

While that goal might seem straightforward, the work to achieve it is complex. However, with much experience and boundless enthusiasm. for his work, Waqar is more than up to the task. 

Since 2011, he has worked globally to design innovative, long-term funding solutions to complex challenges. Before joining the Community Foundation, he worked in South and Central Asian countries creating policies and facilitating public-private sector partnerships that mobilize financing and address social issues like housing, environment and health. 

As the Community Foundation’s director of strategic programs, Waqar will apply his experience locally to achieve similar results: Create more affordable housing, spark entrepreneurship, and, ultimately, help people tend to their basic needs so they can thrive.

“The structure to do this work in the Dubuque region is here,” he says. “The systems are here, the infrastructure is here, it’s just a matter of realigning and reallocating resources in a way to map opportunities and connect the right investors, business groups and industries.”

For Waqar, this work is personal. Growing up in an indigenous community in the Himalayas of Pakistan, he experienced poverty and other challenges that moved him to make a difference for people like him and his loved ones around the world. 

He sought out the best institutes of higher education and secured sponsorships that financed his learning. He earned his Master of Public Policy from the University of Chicago’s Harris School, specializing in finance and international development. He also holds a Master of Business Administration from IBA Karachi.

That drive to make a large-scale impact has paid off for the people and communities he has served – and it has been personally satisfying.

“It’s important to strengthen communities and give people skills for long-term, sustainable growth,” he says. “Seeing the joy and happiness when people achieve something big, that’s moving.”