ZIAD AHMED
Ziad Ahmed is a 25-year-old social entrepreneur, speaker, and strategist — who is the Head of Next Gen @ UTA Marketing.
As a teenager, in 2016, Ziad founded JUV Consulting, a Gen Z company connecting clients with the zeitgeist. JUV then worked with over 30 Fortune 500 companies, was profiled by the New York Times, launched major purpose-driven media campaigns, and launched the first-ever major industry conference with only Gen Z speakers, ZCON. Because of JUV, Ziad was named to the Forbes #30Under30 list when he was 19-years-old. In 2020, Refinery29 called JUV “the largest and most popular Gen Z agency.”
In 2024, United Talent Agency acquired JUV Consulting, forming the Next Gen Practice of UTA Marketing, where Ziad is continuing to lead his team’s award-winning work at the intersection of content, community, and culture.
Ziad also graduated from Yale in 2021, where he focused his research on social media’s impact on policy-making. He speaks often on the power of his generation, and he seeks to use his voice to push the envelope forward wherever/however possible. He has spoken everywhere from Cannes Lions to the White House to VidCon — has been featured everywhere from CNN to VICE to the Guardian.
As a result of Ziad’s leadership within his generation, he was selected in 2023 as an inaugural Obama USA Leader by the Obama Foundation. WWD also named Ziad one of the world’s “Most Influential ESG Leaders” in 2023. Ziad’s “why” is working towards a world where more of us have a seat at the table — where we all have the agency to build our own tables. Overwhelmingly though, he’s just another Gen Zer spending way too much time on TikTok. You can learn more about him via @ziadahmed, but he is in corporate spaces rather a lot — so he has also been named a “LinkedIn Top Voice” in case that’s useful.
SHAINA ZAFAR
Shaina Zafar, 24, is the Co-founder/Chief Marketing Officer at JUV Consulting. She is an unapologetic American-Muslim and proud daughter of first-gen Pakistani parents.
At JUV, she focused on community building between clients and partners, thought leadership, and curated community dinners and events. She has authored Gen Z yellowpapers at the company ranging from topics on Gen Z Yellow to The Future of WebZ (“Web3”) and oversees their weekly trends newsletter, The Screenshot with a subscriber base of 5,000+ business professionals.
She is a graduate from the University of Pennsylvania, as an International Relations major with a focus on the Islamic World and minors in South Asian Studies and Consumer Psychology. She wrote her thesis on impactful ESG practices for businesses. She now serves on the Asian Alumni Board and Young Alumni Board at Penn and is on Yahoo MAKERS Board of Advisors.
She has spoken for major brands like Mondelez, L’Oréal, and KPMG as well as conferences like the U.S. Travel Tourism Conference and Cannes Lions. She has been quoted in the likes of The Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, and Business of Fashion.
Every year on her birthday, she makes a Spotify playlist with 365 songs, customized with playlist covers. If she isn’t exploring new music, you can find her searching up new fonts, cooking at odd hours of the night, or doomscrolling on @ShainaZafar!