Raised in Birmingham, Waseem Mahmood OBE is an award-winning broadcaster who began his career at the BBC, producing for both television and radio. He was one of five producers in the Asian Programmes Unit at BBC Pebble Mill in the early 1980s. The programmes made in the Unit: Asian Magazine on BBC1, Gharbar on BBC 2 and Make Yourself at Home on Radio 4 were a staple part of life for the majority of British Asians at that time. He left to set up TV Asia, the first satellite subscription service for the British Asian community, where he was director of programmes. It later became Zee TV.

He then pioneered public service broadcasting in post-communist states and later in Muslim countries, including Afghanistan in 2002, after the overthrow of the Taliban. Later he developed media projects in Nigeria and Pakistan aimed at countering violent extremism.