Prior to starting mindshare Internet Campaigns, Safdar  co-founded and served as president of the Voters Telecommunications Watch (VTW), a premier grass-roots Internet advocacy organization.  From 1992 through 1997, Safdar served as Vice President for Information Security at Goldman, Sachs & Co.  In 1996, Safdar was named one of Newsweek’s "50 People To Watch on The Internet", and received the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s Pioneer Award that same year for his work in defending civil liberties on the net.

MSNBC noted that "In four years [Safdar and his business partner Seiger] have been at the forefront of the most contentious issues in cyberspace. They've created and honed their Internet strategies in the bare-knuckle world of  Washington politics with incessant digital lobbying." (December 9, 1997).  The USA Today praised them as, "a cyber-savvy pair who have raised online-activism to an art form." (March 3, 1997)

Examples include the innovative "Adopt Your Legislator Campaign" which enables citizens to keep track of their Representative’s views on key Internet policy issues through customized news and timely Alerts.  Seiger and Safdar also organized the 1995 "Black Thursday Protest" during which thousands of web sites went black to protest the enactment of the Communications Decency Act (CDA), and the June 1997 "Countdown to the Supreme Court Campaign", in which tens of thousands of sites joined together to announce the landmark Supreme Court ruling overturning the CDA and establishing strong First Amendment protections for online speech.

Shabbir holds a B.S. in Computer Science from Purdue University and is a native of St. Louis, Missouri.