Described by WIRED as a "formidable speaker" and by a celebrity fellow musician as being "like a 300-year old sage who is wise beyond his years," Amir Ahmad Nasr a.k.a. Drima Starlight is a writer, emerging artist, veteran of intelligence and the founder, frameworks creator, president, and your host, strategic advisor and leadership coach at AssertiveU™ here to fast-track your growth.

After the publication and banning of his debut memoir My Isl@m: How Fundamentalism Stole My Mind and Doubt Freed My Soul, recommended by Foreign Policy magazine among the top 25 books to read in 2013 and in Ken Wilber's The Religion of Tomorrow, he became recognized as a foremost world authority on the subject of technology's and A.I.'s growing impact on the evolution of religions.

He is a firm believer in the major net positive of Pax Americana and the wisdom of the late Senator John McCain that "America's greatest strength has always been its hopeful vision of human progress... Our shared values define us more than our differences. And acknowledging those shared values can see us through our challenges today if we have the wisdom to trust in them again."

Rumor has it that his identity as Amir Ahmad Nasr, like what the journalist Clark Joseph Kent is to Superman, may in fact all be a cover as his "Earthly Alter Ego" for who he really is as the musical magical otherworldly emerging artist, Drima Starlight, a lover of the best of Canada, and of the United States of America as our humanity's greatest hope for progress and promise over evil.

He has been instrumental to innovative founders of billion dollar and seven to nine-figure brands, Fortune 500 teams and their executives, NY Times and Wall Street Journal best-selling authors, Inc. 500 and Forbes 30 Under 30 founders, Grammy and Emmy recognized storytellers, and many diverse aspiring and renowned speakers, coaches and consultants in owning their true leadership voice and fast-tracking their growth resiliently.

A spiritual being first and foremost having a human experience, in Earthly cultural terms, he is a Nubian American Canadian Khartoum-born, Malaysian-raised, English and Arabic speaking man of the world, tracing his lineage to the Nile civilization in north Sudan and south Egypt.

He's been blessed over the years to share the stage with leaders including principled presidents and prime ministers as well as Nobel Peace and Literature Prize laureates and senior members of the Obama administration. He has also spoken at MIT, Columbia University, the think tanks Freedom House and Cato Institute, the University of British Columbia, and the Google HQ in New York City, among other institutions. But it was after a very brief yet profoundly indelible close in-person experience with Senator John McCain on September 30th, 2015 in Washington DC that Amir's life was never the same again. Three years later, after that personal exchange at Harman Center for the Arts and then in Congress left a lasting impact, Senator McCain passed away from brain cancer at the age of 81 on August 25th, Amir's 32nd birthday.

A poet at heart, when Amir was just a nearly seven year old playful little boy back in the early 1990's in Doha, Qatar, he was secretly and methodically tortured, tormented, and sexually assaulted, including orally, over weeks, nearly to death in a small mosque in Al-Mamoura neighborhood by two Islamist Egyptian terrorists who were disconnected from their humanity. Only a few had an inkling of what happened.

The heinous acts Amir experienced happened not long after one of them had taken over as the imam of the neighborhood mosque with a hidden theocratic antisemitic agenda, and they discovered in a class Amir attended that he's the son of an American educated professor. Facing an impending onslaught, Amir stood his ground but could not physically stop them. To make matters worse, they tricked him into believing "God" would tell them if he dared utter a word and they would kill him and his parents for it. He coped the best he could.

Both terrorists belonged to the rogue group the Muslim Brotherhood whose members themselves were tortured in the prisons of secular Arab Egyptian nationalist, President Jamal Abdel Nasser under his orders after an attempt on his life by a Muslim Brotherhood member.

It was a pitiful vengeful act, cowardly inflicted upon Amir by two of the least and lowest of so-called men, out of empty sad envy for being a better reciter and caller to prayer whose parents lovingly as best as they could raised Sudanese-American. Gratefully, feeling in this world but not of it, it wasn't in vain as he did not have the freedom or luxury to wallow in victimhood or cynicism in those difficult years. Even after the horrors of 9/11, he refused to give up on America as a state of mind, and neither on the Divine nor himself and his dreams as a little boy.

It took Amir many years to regain his joy and freedom in living by being able to write and speak about his story, embracing timeless resilient spiritual development practices that freed him to thrive and fighting back as an incisive strategic intelligence analyst and advisor. He is a firm believer in the benefits of "verbal fasting" and teaching leaders who consult with him how to harness the power of the inner voice of wisdom and "stillness that speaks" in their spiritual and personal growth. In a complex noisy world, now more than ever, the ability to accurately and productively self-reflect and be self-expressed and self-fulfilled in your advocacy for greater impact, is a superpower.

As a global brand, AssertiveU™ is inspired by an ethos drawn from Amir's international upbringing as a third culture kid. Starting at age 11, after leaving Qatar, Amir attended British and American international schools in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, and grew up with a third-culture experience in his formative years. According to the research summary on Wikipedia, "third culture individuals (TCI) are people who were raised in a culture other than their parents' or the culture of their country of nationality, and also live in a different environment during a significant part of their child development years. They typically are exposed to a greater volume and variety of cultural influences than those who grow up in one particular cultural setting."

Amir's humanist global perspective with attunement to the cultural nuances of storytelling in different contexts is thanks to this experience of growing up in multiple settings with family in Sudan, Qatar, Malaysia, America, Canada, England and then back to Canada. Now rooted in Vancouver, Canada in the Pacific Northwest, he is enthusiastically focused on leading and growing AssertiveU™ as a tribute to humanity and to those who impacted him most on his mission through a renewed greater human story.

Throughout his journey as a seeker, he was fortunate to be warmly welcomed as a curious student practitioner by accommodating hosts and spiritual leaders at profound Hindu temples in Bali and Shinshoji Buddhist temple in Japan as well as in synagogues, churches and mosques with diverse interpretations, globally. Along the way he also learned invaluable lessons and experienced real growth after immersing himself in the Human Potential Movement regardless of its over-emphasis on "positive thinking" and denial of the tragic dimensions of the human condition at times. Notably, it was from within the timeless human spiritual lineages that he found the most potent principles and practices.

Of particular resonance to him is the univeralist Inayati music-honoring Sufi Muslim lineage of Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan and of Sufism in the words of Kabir Helminski as "a way of life in which a deeper identity is discovered and lived. This deeper identity, beyond the already known personality, is in harmony with all that exists." As it turns out in Amir's experience, when one stays true to a desire toward universality, a more potent possibility shows up, accessible to all who become open to it as an inherent realizable part of our human potential.

Bit by bit, with steady patience, Amir rediscovered his love for spirituality and the Mystery of everything: referred to as Ma'at in the temples of the Nile Valley and described as the "indestructible Unity of Existence," the "Beloved" in the Sufi tradition and "Source" in New Age spirituality. An experience available to all who allow it.

As the Sufi poet al-Shaykh al-Akba said: "O Marvel! A garden amidst fires! My heart has become receptive of every form: it is a pasture for gazelles, a monastery for Christian monks, a temple for deities, the Ka'bah of the pilgrim, the tables of the Torah, and the book of the Qur'an. I follow the religion of Love. Wherever its camel mounts turn, that is my religion and my Faith." Stated differently, he was referring to a state of being rooted in unity consciousness and the "Unity of Being."

As a storyteller, accounts of the story of Joseph's rise as visionary dream interpreting confidant to the King of the Nile valley, and then as ruler of Egypt, hold special meaning for Amir.

Full of practical wisdom on patience, stewardship, assertive leadership, strategic foresight and good governance, Joseph's story richly informs Amir's journey and facilitations with everyone.

Many have found and continue to find his lived lessons invaluable, and even life-changing. It was in 2006, after starting to share learnings, art and experiences with inquisitive close friends and colleagues, that the requests to teach his methods and strategies grew. In 2014, after arriving in Vancouver, Canada to seek protection and political asylum from persecution due to the banning of his debut book, crisis set in.

Then well into 2015, in particular after a week-long leadership development seminar he was immersed in at the Aspen Institute, it started to make a lot more sense for Amir to consider starting a new kind of educational endeavor.

Crucially, like the Aspen Institute it would not shy away from dealing with the global challenges of the human experience too often ignored by much of the "New Thought" and human potential movement. Moreover, like Esalen Institute, at its heart would be a potent transpersonal psychology-based, spirituality-informed approach infused into it. After all, without peace and human rights, we cannot realize our human potential and express our human creativity. Despite initial doubts, and in response to the increasing demands on his time and bandwith, in mid 2016, Amir eventually founded a new formerly stealth venture available in-person and online virtually globally. Today AssertiveU™ has intensives for leaders, like you, to own your voice and fast-track your growth.

Amir's long track record as a writer, producing literary, intelligence and investigative journalism work as a spiritual humanist and classical liberal has attracted praise from a global audience and influential readership. They include Academy and Emmy Award recognized Hollywood personalities, Marvel and Disney storytellers, White House officials, US Department of Defense, Five Eyes intelligence officers, national security professionals, celebrated entrepreneurs, Ivy League academics and tech investors, and many fellow artists, activists and entrepreneurs. Having traveled as a TCI writer to dozens of countries, Amir merges the best and most proven of timeless Eastern and Western philosophies, practices and storytelling traditions, amplified by A.I. to serve you with greater understanding and versatility.

Most of all, Ken Wilber, the world renowned American integral philosopher of consciousness as well as respected scholar of transpersonal psychology featured in the classic Matrix trilogy movies, praised Amir's work as revolutionary.

He described Amir's debut book as "important and significant... especially at this time in our history... This is the right message, at the right time, from the right person."

Integral scholars strive to comprehensively organize, harmonize and merge the best most proven of humanity's wisdom traditions, experiences and sciences into an illuminating grand "theory of everything" about our reality.

Amir has been featured in dozens of global journalism media outlets in over 13 languages telling stories about spirituality, human flourishing, our new sci-fi present and better alternative models of reality that free you to thrive. From greening the barren deserts of Earth and achieving food security for all to making education ubiquitous, renewing democracy and living healthier longer life-spans assisted by humanoids, together, we can lead with better stories of possibilities to bring them alive, sooner. And perhaps some of us will one day live to space travel and witness humanoids growing palms from the Nile in lush gardens on Mars.

He is the formerly anonymous voice and blogger behind the 3-time Weblog Award nominated provocative blog, The Sudanese Thinker, and a featured personality in the Nick Nanton Emmy nominated documentary film Live Your Quest along with Tom Chi of Google X, Rev. Michael Beckwith of Agape, and the NYT best-selling authors Jack Canfield and Lisa Nichols, among others. Privately, through strategic intelligence, he remains engaged in award-winning initiatives that support our national security and human rights globally. Intending to become a full US citizen too in due time like his parents, he is a permanent resident and soon to be citizen of Canada, the land of maple syrup, beavers, fearsome hockey players and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, on guard for thee.

As the founder of AssertiveU™ he has pioneered facilitation methods that resolve stubborn issues where others failed. When he is not facilitating sessions, Amir Ahmad Nasr is deep at work as an artist, writer, budding screenwriter, singer-songwriter, and the director and producer of his inevitable upcoming debut cinematic concept album and documentary film.

A deep insightful listener and reflective artist whose personal lived values are transcendence, musicality and conviction, he guides leaders who are conscious reality creators and experts in their fields, like you, to face their foremost fears as well as powerfully find, clarify and amplify their true voice and be in their element.

As long as you too are reflective, self-responsible, committed and resonant with our values, welcome to the AssertiveU™ campus. To learn more about enrolling, sign up with your email to access your complimentary facilitation session and speak soon. - The Team