Fatima Iqbal: Reflecting on 10 years with Azzad

Ten years ago, Fatima Iqbal joined Azzad as a financial advisor and the company’s first CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER™. She joined while the Global Financial Crisis was unfolding, just a few weeks before Lehman Brothers declared bankruptcy and a couple of months before President Bush signed into law the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008, which included the $700 billion asset purchase program to bail out financial institutions. Markets bottomed out on March 6, 2009, but immediately began to bounce back, beginning the historically long bull market that we’re enjoying today. In 2010, the economy started adding jobs on a consistent basis. In fact, the U.S. hasn’t had a single month of job losses since October 2010 — the longest stretch of job gains on record, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. As we look back on the last 10 years, we asked Fatima to share her reflections on how Azzad responded to the financial crisis and how the company developed new products to meet the needs of American Muslim investors. I joined Azzad at the end of July 2008.  At that time, the markets were volatile and investors were on edge. Some may think it was the worst time