Zalmai is the founder and Executive Chair of the Mosaic Global Foundation. Prior to this role, he served as the Programme Lead for Central and South Asia at the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change (TBI) in London. From 2014 to 2021, he worked as a public policy advisor to the government of Afghanistan, and between 2020 and 2021, he served as a Senior Migration Expert for a European Union (EU) project implemented by the German GIZ in Kabul. During this time, he also established two NGOs—one focused on counter-radicalisation and the other on education and civil society dialogue. Additionally, he was a fellow at the Afghanistan Institute of Strategic Studies (AISS), a local think tank. Zalmai holds an undergraduate degree in Politics from the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London, and a Master’s degree in Political Theory from the University of Essex.