Kashmeri has been part of the information technology business for over 30 years. Lately, he has focused his business career at the intersection of technology, international business, globalization and foreign policy.
Before starting his strategic communications practice, he was Publisher and Chief Executive Officer of New York based ebizChronicle.com, the influential online daily of e-business strategy that he founded in January 2000. He guided its growth to 35,000 readers most of whom were senior executives from global 2000 companies, and government officials from the United States and Europe. ebizChronicle’s readership was acquired by an international strategy consulting firm in December, 2003.
For fifteen years prior to that, Kashmeri was President of Niche Systems, Inc., New York. Niche set up and supported accounting software for global companies. He founded and was chairman of Accounting Systems International, the first global consortium of systems integrators. Through this practice he became well known for his views on European integration and the euro’s impact on American business and foreign policy. He organized a series of eight conferences to explain the euro’s strategic impact on American business. Senior corporate and government leaders attended and spoke at these conferences at the U.S. State Department, the Federal Reserve in Dallas, and the American Embassy in London.
Kashmeri was a founding director of the Regional Justice Information Service (REJIS), a pioneering public-private outsourcing venture that continues to provide information services to the police, prosecutors, courts and correctional agencies of the entire Saint Louis Metropolitan area. His work included overseeing cyber and site security and ensuring the privacy of personal records.
Kashmeri is recognized on both sides of the Atlantic as an observer and commentator on U.S.-European relations. He organized and co-directed a conference held at Ditchley, UK, in April 2003, titled, “The U.S. and the EU, transatlantic drift or common destiny; Managing The New Reality,” and his observations introduced the final segment of BBC Radio’s three part (May 2003) documentary, “Which Way Do We Face,” a discussion of Britain’s unique role in the transatlantic alliance.
Ambassador David Aaron, Under Secretary for International Trade, U.S. Department of Commerce called him, “...a leading national voice on European monetary union and U.S. business.” He was publicly cited by the United States Commerce Department for his work in support of American exporters to prepare them for the euro, and appeared frequently in the print and broadcast media. Kashmeri was featured in the CNN half-hour documentary on the euro’s introduction.
Kashmeri has written numerous opinion pieces on transatlantic issues and chaired business and public policy panels.. He was an invited participant from Vermont to the 2005 National Security Seminar at the U.S. Army War College, Carlisle, Pennsylvania. Regularly moderates the technology strategy panel at the annual World Leadership Forum in New York, is a Fellow of the Foreign Policy Association, a member of the American Advisory Board of the Ditchley Foundations, and a member and past Governor of New York’s Union League Club. He served on the World Bank’s committee to help determine the future of the bank’s global magazine, and is a member of the Board of Trustees of the Reading, Vermont, Public Library.
Kashmeri earned a BS in Aerospace Engineering and an MS in Engineering, both from St. Louis University, where he taught on the faculty for six years. He and his wife Deborah Ellis, a watercolorist, live on a farm in South Reading, Vermont, with five sheep, a donkey and their Rhodesian Ridgeback. He divides his time between the residence in Vermont and New York.
