Professor Rifaat Ahmed Abdel Karim has been the Secretary-General of the Islamic Financial Services Board since 2002. Prior to his current position, Professor Rifaat was the Secretary-General of the Accounting and Auditing Organization for Islamic Financial Institutions, a post he held for more than eight years. He was a member of the Standards Advisory Council of the International Accounting Standards Board for two terms, and is currently a member of the Consultative Advisory Group of the International Auditing and Assurance Standards Board. Professor Rifaat was a Visiting Professor at Surrey University (U.K.) and Honorary Professor at Monash University (Australia). He is currently a Visiting Professor at Reading University (U.K.). Professor Rifaat is the co-author of Business and Accounting Ethics in Islam, the Euromoney bestseller book Islamic Finance: Innovation and Growth, and Islamic Finance: The Regulatory Challenge recently published by John Wiley. He is also the author of many academic and professional papers on accounting, governance, and finance issues in Islamic banking and finance.
Dr. Volker Nienhaus was Professor of Economics at the German universities of Trier (1989–90) and Bochum (1990–2004) before he became President of the University of Marburg (election period 2004–10). He has published numerous books and articles on Islamic economics and Islamic banking and finance since the 1980s. He was a member of several academic advisory boards of public and private institutions in Germany, including the German Orient-Foundation (1993–2006) and the Federal Ministry of Economic Cooperation and Development (1998–2008). In 2006, he was appointed a member of the Governing Council of the International Centre for Education in Islamic Finance (INCEIF) in Kuala Lumpur. He is also consultant to the Islamic Financial Services Board on governance issues of takaful operations.