Accountability: Governing Body

BRAC USA Board of Directors

BRAC UK Trustees

BRAC Governing Body

Tahrunnessa Abdullah
Bangladesh

Active in the women's development movement since the early sixties, Tahrunnesa Abdullah worked at the Comilla Academy for Rural Development for nine years as instructor in charge of the Women's Education and Home Development Program. She was Chairman, Bangladesh Shishu Academy and Bangladesh Jatiyo Mohila Sangstha and Chairperson of the core groups  in the preparation of the National Plan of Action for Children, 1997-2002. She was also a member of the team responsible for the preparation of the National Action Plan for Women's Development: Implementation of Beijing Platform for Action. She was a member of Local Government Commission.

Mrs. Abdullah served as a member of the Board of trustees of the  International Rice Research Institute, Phillipines (1984-88) and Aga Khan University, Pakistan (1991-1994). At present she is the Chairperson of Gono Bishwabidyalay, Chairperson of ASA, and member of the Board of Directors of the Polli Karma Shahayk
Foundation and BRAC.

Mrs. Abdullah received the Ramon Magsaysay Award for Community Leadership in 1978. She has written a number of papers and articles on her work and in 1982 published a book, Rural Women of Bangladesh - Prospects for Change, co-authored with Dr. Sondra Zeidenstein.

Mrs. Abdullah received her M.A. from Dhaka University and M.S. from Michigan State University.

Shabana Azmi
India

Shabana Azmi is an internationally acclaimed actress who was a member of the Indian Parliament and a UN Goodwill Ambassador. She is also a vocal and committed social activist. She has undertaken campaigns and made public statements over various issues, particularly social justice, rights of women, plight of slum dwellers etc. She is a leading advocate of AIDS awareness in India. She is also a visiting Professor at Ann Arbor, Michigan and has addressed several universities in India and abroad, including Harvard, Columbia, Berkeley, MIT, University of Chicago and the University of London, on the need to relate communal harmony to issues of social justice.

For her sincerity and commitment in social activism, Ms. Azmi won the Rajiv Gandhi Award, the Yash Bhartiya Award from the government of the state of Uttar   Pradesh, India and the Padma Shri in 1988 from the Government of India. She was chosen by Time Magazine as 1 of 25 Asian heroes and was the only woman amongst the four Indians who have made a difference. Ms. Azmi was a former member of the Rajya Sabha. She is the also the winner of an unprecedented  five National Awards for Best Actrees in India.

Ms. Azmi completed her degree in Psychology at St. Xavier's College, Mumbai, and she took a Diploma in Acting at the Film and Television Institute in Pune, India in 1972.

Sylvia Borren
Netherland

Sylvia Borren is presently co-chair of the Global Call for Action against Poverty (GCAP) and of its Dutch Chapter EEN. This is a world-wide citizen’s network. She is also co-chair of the Worldconnectors, a diverse Dutch network of concerned citizens.  Borren is a member of the Advisory Council on International Affairs of the Dutch Government (vice-chair of the COS, the Commission on Development Cooperation).  She is also the independent Chairperson of a programme with the Global Trade Union ‘Education International’ and Oxfam Novib to accelerate Quality Teacher Training for informal and formal teachers in developing countries, including creating a competency profile and life-skill curriculum.  Borren is part of the International Women’s Commission for a just and sustainable peace in Palestine and Israel.

In 1994 Sylvia joined Novib first as Project Director, and from 1999 to January 2008 she was the Executive Director of Oxfam Novib, part of Oxfam International. She chaired the New Dialogue (a broad civil society platform) and co-founded the NSF (Dutch Social Forum). She was member of the board of governors of a large mental health institute (Altrecht) for nearly ten years. In 2006 she wrote the ‘Poverty Requiem’ with composer/conductor Peter Maissan: which has since been performed more than 60 times in 25 countries.

Sylvia Borren was born in 1950 in Eindhoven, The Netherlands. She holds a BA degree in Education and Religious Studies and a MA degree in Education.

Martha Alter Chen
USA

Martha Alter Chen is a Lecturer in Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School and International Coordinator of the global research-policy-action network Women in Informal Employment: Globalizing and Organizing (WIEGO). An experienced development practitioner and scholar, her areas of specialisation are employment, poverty, and gender. Dr. Chen is the author or co-author of many books including Women and Men in the Informal Economy: A Statistical Picture and Progress of the World’s Women 2005: Women, Work, and Poverty.  Before joining Harvard University in 1987, she spent two decades in Bangladesh and India: working with BRAC as an Executive Assistant and Head of Women’s Programme, and serving as field representative of Oxfam America for India and Bangladesh.  She is known for effectively bridging the fields of practice and scholarship. 

Chen received a Ph.D. in South Asia Regional Studies from the University of Pennsylvania.

Faruq A. Choudhury
Bangladesh

Faruq A. Choudhury was born in 1934 in Assam, India. Following graduation from Dhaka University he entered the Pakistan Foreign service in 1956. As a Foreign Service trainee he read International law and diplomacy at The Fletcher School in Boston and received training at the Foreign Service Institute in Washington DC and the British Foreign Office in London. He studied the French language at Alliance Francaise in Paris. On completion of his training in 1959 he was posted to the Pakistan Embassy in Rome.For the next ten years, till l969, he served in various capacities in the Pakistan Embassies in Rome,Beijing The Hague and Algiers, when he was posted to the Pakistan Foreign Office in Islamabad as a Director and subsequently to the Branch Foreign Office in Dhaka. In 1971 he played a significant role in the establishment of the new Bangladesh Foreign Office and was the first Chief of Protocol. He subsequently served as the Deputy High Commissioner for Bangladesh in London and Ambassador in Abu Dhabi and Brussels. He returned to the Dhaka Foreign Office in 1982 as an Additional Secretary and was promoted to Foreign Secretary in 1984. As Foreign Secretary, he played a significant role in the creation of SAARC, acting as Secretary General of the first SAARC summit held in Dhaka in 1985. He subsequently served as Bangladesh High Commissioner to India.

Since his retirement from the Government in 1992 , Mr. Choudhury has been involved with BRAC, till 2000 as Adviser and currently as a member of the Governing Board. He is also a member of the Governing Body of the BRAC University.

Mr. Choudhury is the Chairman of Delta-Brac Housing, the first private sector housing financing company of Bangladesh. Mr. Choudhury is a regular columnist in the national dailies and is the author of a number of books in Bangla. He has served as an international Election Observer during elections in Sri Lanka, Pakistan and the Maldives.

Luva Nahid Choudhury
Bangladesh

Luva Nahid Choudhury is an architect and heads Abashan Upodeshta Ltd, an architecture practice in Dhaka. She is the Director General of Bengal Foundation, a trust that supports and promotes the arts in Bangladesh. She also heads ICE Media Ltd., a leading publishing concern.

Ms. Choudhury completed her Bachelor of Architecture from Bangladesh University of Engineering & Technology. She was born in 1962.

Susan Davis
USA

Ms. Davis is a thought leader in international development and civil society innovation. She is a founder and current President and CEO of BRAC USA. In addition she was a founding board member and Chair of the Grameen Foundation and current board member. She serves on Ashoka’s international board committee that selects Ashoka Fellows. She is also Senior Advisor to New York University’s Reynolds Programme on Social Entrepreneurship.

Previously she led Ashoka’s Global Academy for Social Entrepreneurship, co-founded the University Network for Social Entrepreneurship and oversaw Ashoka’s expansion to the Middle East, North Africa and Central Asia. In addition she served as a Senior Advisor to the Director General of the International Labor Organization. Prior to that, she led the global advocacy group, Women's Environment and Development Organisation.  She has extensive micro-credit experience from her years with the Ford Foundation in Bangladesh and from her work with Women's World Banking.

Ms. Davis serves on numerous other boards including Project Enterprise, Sirleaf Market Women’s Fund, and African Women’s Development Fund USA. She is on Mary Robinson’s Advisory Council of Realising Rights: the Ethical Globalisation Initiative and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Susan Davis was educated at Georgetown, Harvard and Oxford universities.

Shafiq ul Hassan (Quais)
Bangladesh

Shafiq ul Hassan (Quais) is a businessman who has been involved in marketing of garments produced in Bangladesh to Europe since 1986. He is the Managing Director of Echo Sourcing Ltd UK.  His company was awarded Runner’s Up – Zero Defect On Time (ZDOT) in 1999 and Supplier of the Year in 2003 by New Look plc UK.

Most of Mr. Hassan’s education has been in the UK and he received his MSc in Process Analysis & Development from Aston University, Birmingham. He was born in Baniyachong, Bangladesh in 1958.

Kazi Aminul Huque
Bangladesh

Kazi Aminul Huque was the senior partner of Rahman Rahman Huq, Chartered Accountants. The firm is a Bangladesh partnership and a member firm of KPMG International, which today is ranked worldwide as one of the largest international accounting firms renowned for the quality of its client service. Mr. Huque was a partner of this firm for more than 35 years and participated in several KPMG conferences and seminars abroad on audit techniques and tools. He was also a Founder Trustee of Transparency International, Bangladesh Chapter, established in 1996.

Mr. Huque's involvement with BRAC started as a general member in 1979. He later became a member of BRAC's Governing Body in 1987.

Syed Humayun Kabir
Bangladesh

Syed Humayun Kabir was Chairman and Managing Director of Pfizer in Bangladesh for 21 years. He also served as Chairman/President of the Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce and Industries, Bangladesh Employers Association, Foreign Investors Chamber of Commerce & Industries, American-Bangladesh Economic Forum and Transparency International-Bangladesh. He has been a member of the board of several banks and an insurance company. He is a trustee of the Centre for Policy Dialogue (CPD) and currently the Chairman of Renata Ltd.

Mr. Kabir has had board level association with BRAC since 1972. He was its Chairman for over 20 years. He is the founder of Sajida Foundation, an organization founded to serve the poor in peri-urban areas.

Mr. Kabir has an honours degree in Chemistry from Dhaka University.

Irene Zubaida Khan
Bangladesh

Irene Zubaida Khan was the Secretary General of Amnesty International (AI).
She was leading the development of AI's next 6-year strategic plan with particular focus on rights holders and partners. She launched worldwide campaigns to Stop Violence against Women, Control Arms (in coalition with Oxfam and IANSA) and Counter Terror with Justice and is currently preparing a new global campaign on Human Dignity (human rights and poverty) in 2009.

Irene Khan contributed to the development of INGO Accountability Charter and establishment of the Berlin Civil Society Centre. She raised public awareness on human rights issues through extensive high profile media work and other external relations activities in more than 40 countries around the world.

Prior to working in Amnesty International from 2001, Ms. Khan was working in the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) from 1980. She served in progressively responsible positions at UNHCR Headquarters in Geneva and field duty stations, with responsibilities for management, operations, legal and policy issues, government, donor and NGO relations, media, and developing broad experience and understanding of all aspects of humanitarian operations.

From 1979- 1980, Irene Khan was a legal assistant and Ford Foundation Fellow doing research on Islam and Human Rights with the International Commission of Jurists (Geneva).

Ms. Khan was also the member of the Advisory Council of the UN Global Compact and is currently a member of the Advisory Council of Transparency International.

She won the 2006 City of Sydney Peace Prize and 2002 Woman of the Year (UK) award.

Irene Khan obtained her Bachelor of Laws degree in 1978 from University of Manchester, UK and Master of Laws degree in 1979 from Harvard Law School, USA.

Latifur Rahman
Bangladesh

Latifur Rahman is Chairman and CEO of Transcom Group of Bangladesh, with an annual turnover of around US$ 220 million. He is also President of the Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Dhaka and Vice President of the International Chamber of Commerce, Bangladesh.

Formerly, Mr. Rahman served as President of Bangladesh Employer's Federation and Member, Executive Committee, Federation of Bangladesh Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Bangladesh Jute Mills Association and Bangladesh Tea Associations. He was member of the Executive Board of Bangladesh Bank. He has been closely involved with fiscal and trade policy-making bodies of the Government as Chairman, Tradebody Reforms Committee, Member, Advisory Committee, WTO, National Committee on Export Promotion, Foreign Trade Institute, Consultative Committee on Jute.

Mr. Rahman is a member of Bangladesh Better Business Forum. He was awarded Business Executive of the Year 2001 by the American Chamber of Commerce in Bangladesh. Mr. Rahman is Chairman of Nestle Ltd., Bangladesh and Holcim Ltd., Bangladesh.

Rokia Afzal Rahman
Bangladesh

Rokia Afzal Rahman started her career as a banker and became the first woman bank manager of erstwhile East Pakistan in 1964. In 1980 she ventured into business and set up an agro industry. Later her business expanded to other areas such as insurance, media and real estate. She is the founder of Women Entrepreneurs Association, Bangladesh, which works for women's empowerment through entrepreneurship development, facilitating access to collateral free credit, organising management and skills training for women throughout Bangladesh. Mrs. Rahman founded Dhaka's Presidency University as well as several marketing outlets owned and managed by women under the name of Mini Marts. She is also the Founder-President of Bangladesh Federation of Women Entrepreneurs.

Mrs. Rahman was elected President of Bangladeh Employers' Federation in 1997-1998. She was a director on the Board of the Central Bank of Bangladesh in 1999-2001. In 2001 she was appointed advisor to the Caretaker Government of Bangladesh. She is also Chair of Airlinks Group and Mediaworld Ltd.

Some of the Awards received by Mrs. Rahman include the Priyadarshani Award in Delhi for her contribution towards development, Leading women Entrepreneurs of the World Award in Monte Carlo in 1999, Amcham's Business Person of the Year Award, 2003 and Bangladesh Shilpa Bank's award for Good Business Management.

Dr. Debapriya Bhattacharya
Bangladesh

Dr. Debapriya Bhattacharya is a macro-economist, public policy analyst and the Executive Director of the Centre for Policy Dialogue (CPD), Bangladesh.

Prior to joining CPD he worked as a Senior Research Fellow at the Bangladesh Institute of Development Studies (BIDS). He was a Senior  Fulbright Fellow at the Centre for Global Development (CGD), Washington D.C. in 2004-2005.


He was member of many Policy Advisory Committee of Bangladesh including Banking Sector Reform Committee; Advisory Committee of the Securities and Exchange Commission; Panel of Economists, Fifth Five Year Plan, Ministry of Planning; National Committee on Utilisation of Gas Resources, Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources.

He is affiliated with different international institutions including International Centre for Trade and Development (ICTSD), Oxford Development Studies, South Asian Studies, Colombo and EU-LDC Network.

Dr. Bhattacharya has more than one hundred publications to his credit. Dr. Bhattacharya's current interest relates to reform economics and strategic policy issues. His major works relate to foreign aid and global trade regime, investment and finance, industry and technology. He has also worked in the areas of regional cooperation, environment, human development, micro-credit and enterprise development.

Dr. Bhattacharya was born in 1956. He studied at St. Gregory's High School, Dhaka and Dhaka College, Dhaka. Did his M.Sc. (Economics) with  distinction and Ph.D. (Economics) from the Plekhanov Institute of National Economy, Moscow. Dr. Bhattacharya was a Post-doctoral Fellow at  the Queen Elizabeth House, University of Oxford.

 

Dr. Mahabub Hossain
Bangladesh

Mahabub Hossain is an internationally renowned development economist. Prior to joining BRAC, Dr. Hossain was the Head of the Social Sciences Division and Programme Leader, Rainfed Ecosystems Programme of the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI), Philippines. He was also the Director General of Bangladesh Institute of Development Studies (BIDS) from 1989 to 1992. Dr. Hossain, is known for his substantial contributions to research on development economics and agriculture policy in South and Southeast Asia.

Dr. Hossain obtained his Masters in Economics in 1969 from Dhaka University and his PhD in Economics in 1977 from Cambridge University, UK. Throughout his distinguished career, he has authored/co-authored eleven books and research monographs and contributed more than 140 papers in refereed journals and edited books. He was awarded the first Gold Medal from the Bangladesh Agricultural Economist Association (in 1985) in recognition of outstanding contribution to understanding the operation of rural economy in Bangladesh.

Dr. Hossain, a Bangladeshi national, was born in 1945 in Nadia, West Bengal, India.

Muhammad A. (Rumee) Ali
Bangladesh

Muhammad A. (Rumee) Ali served at different levels in local and international banking sector. Prior to joining in BRAC, he served as the Deputy Governor of Bangladesh Bank. With his appointment as Country Head and General Manager of Grindlays Bangladesh in March 1997, Mr. Ali became the first Bangladeshi to head a major international bank in Bangladesh. In July 2000, following the takeover of ANZ Grindlays by Standard Chartered Bank, Ali was appointed the CEO of the Standard Chartered Group in Bangladesh, heading both Standard Chartered Bank and Standard Chartered Grindlays Bank. His banking experience includes stints in India, United Kingdom and Australia. Mr. Ali was elected a Fellow of the Bangladesh Institute of Bankers in 2001.

Mr. Ali is a director of the boards of several organisations including the Governing Board of PKSF and is also a member of the Global Steering Committee of the ‘Performance Based Grants Initiative’ of the International Finance Corporation. He is a member of the Better Business Forum and the Technical Advisory Committee of Bangladesh Investment Climate Fund. At present he is the Vice Chairman of Bangladesh Association of Banks.

He received a number of awards including C. R. Das and Atish Dipanker Gold Medal for Banking in 1995 and 1999 and ‘CEO of the Year’ awarded by Junior Chamber International, Bangladesh and Bangladesh Management Institute in 2000 and 2001 respectively.

Mr. Ali received his B.A. (Honours) and M.A. in Economics from Dhaka University and was born in Dhaka, Bangladesh in 1951.

BRAC Affiliate Office Governing Bodies

BRAC USA Board of Directors

BRAC UK Trustees