38. Faraz Yousufzai, Waterhouse Consulting Group

Faraz is a senior partner at Waterhouse Consulting Group, a Birmingham-based, multi-disciplinary management consultancy that specialises in executive search and selection, diversity solutions, government relations, counter extremism and PR, including a complete corporate event management service.

Until June this year he was business development manager at Working Links, West Midlands, a public/private partnership managing large-scale regeneration and employment programmes.

A law graduate from Southampton University, he was the former head of business development at the one of the UK's leading regeneration companies and has had a successful cross sector career in social enterprise, regeneration, health and communications.

He is chairman of the Reflection Network, a national charity established in 2004 to deliver diversity solutions on faith communities to public and private sector organisations.

As a governor of two inner city secondary schools, he led an award-winning citizenship programme called Birmingham Young Citizens, an organisation he founded in 2002. Faraz is also a member of the Government's Ethnic Minority Advisory Group, a non-executive director at Heart of Birmingham Primary Care Trust and a popular columnist/blogger for the Birmingham Mail.

An accomplished public speaker and renowned MC, he is the founding director and presenter of the internationally- acclaimed Muslim Writers' Awards 2008.

Hailed by the likes of Jermaine Jackson, Baroness Sayeda Warsi and James Caan as one of the best organised and most entertaining awards events in the national calendar, it was attended by more than 1,000 people and broadcast live across the globe.

Away from his business and multiple entrepreneurial pursuits, Faraz volunteers his time with international aid agencies to raise money for victims of natural disasters and war.

Born and raised in Four Oaks, he now lives in Birmingham with his four children and in his spare time, plays lead guitar with his band Silk Road, which has been described as the UK's first Sufi Soul fusion group.