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With an eye towards public service from a young age, former planning commissioner Samir Qureshi said he is campaigning for one of two open Dublin City Council seats in the Nov. 3 general election “because it goes back to my passion of giving back.”
“I’m doing this because I want to give back to the community,” Qureshi told the Weekly. “I want to show the younger generation that people should get involved in public service, and they should participate.”
Qureshi said his campaign slogan “Trust. Transform. Together.” aligns with his council goals including local response to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.
“When I talk about trust, I talk about public safety for the community, especially with COVID,” he said.
As vice president of global sales operations at Seagate, Qureshi has “been involved with COVID globally since January” as part of an executive crisis team overseeing 46,000 employees, and said he sees “from that experience, bringing that into our town to see what are the things that are keeping the public safe.”
Public safety falls under the “great quality of life” that Qureshi said he wants to preserve in Dublin, if elected, including addressing traffic and housing concerns. “I’m about growing the city in the right way, keeping the quality of life that we’ve seen,” Qureshi said.
Referring back to his campaign slogan, Qureshi said, “When you think of ‘transform,’ we’re going through growing pains as a city. We’re one of the top growth cities in the state and we have to start looking at where do we have growth, how do we manage the growth.”
“I call it smart growth — not completely stopping the growth or full growth,” Qureshi added. “There’s not that much land in the city to develop. Let’s make sure we have a very good process there to understand what the city needs, what developers want and figure out a way to put in the right infrastructure.”
Qureshi also shared his vision for economically transforming the city: “Let’s look at opportunities to bring more tech companies into the town and make it into a mid-tech hub. That’s, to me, transformative itself.”
For the past nine years, Qureshi has called Dublin home, along with his wife of 28 years, Sobia, and four children (three daughters and one son — all DUSD attendees). During that time, he started fulfilling a lifelong interest in public service with an appointment on the Dublin Planning Commission.
“It’s been a passion of mine to be public service since I was a little kid, since I was 13, when I came to the U.S. 38 years ago,” Qureshi said.
Before moving to the Bay Area, Qureshi was also elected in several other states as a school board, zoning board, and environmental commission member. Anywhere that he’s lived, Qureshi said he’s always been committed to building strong relationships to ensure the entire community is on the same page.
“There are so many diversified groups coming to this town, I want to be sure we have a very good understanding of each culture,” Qureshi said. “I’m hoping that people see that of me, that they see I really care about people and want to do things for the community.”
Qureshi is one of nine candidates running in the Dublin City Council race on Nov. 3, along with Sri Muppidi, Dawn Plants, Sherry Hu, Shawn Costello, Razi Hasni, Lucrecia Deleon, Michael McCorriston and Kashef Qaadri.
For more information about Qureshi, visit www.samirfordublin.com.
