Fazle Hasan Abed was educated in Dhaka and Glasgow Universities, before qualifying as a Chartered Accountant in London. He returned home in the late 1960s to work as an executive with Shell Oil. Abed gave up his corporate career to join Bangladesh’s liberation movement and thereafter started BRAC in 1972. Abed has received numerous national and international awards for his achievements in leading BRAC, including the Ramon Magsaysay Award for Community Leadership (1980), UNICEF’s Maurice Pate Award (1992), Olof Palme Award (2001), Schwab Foundation Social Entrepreneurship Award (2002), Gates Award for Global Health (2004), UNDP Mahbub ul Haq Award for Outstanding Contribution in Human Development (2004) and the Henry R. Kravis Prize in Leadership (2007). He is recognized by Ashoka as one of the “global greats” and a founding member of its prestigious Global Academy for Social Entrepreneurship. Abed has also received an honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters from Yale University.

Susan M. Davis spent the early part of her career in Bangladesh working with Ford Foundation where she led innovative initiatives aimed at scaling up microfinance institutions that were owned and governed by poor women and promoting social entrepreneurship. She worked with Women’s World Banking, led the Women’s Environment & Development Organization, and advised the head of the ILO. She has been a leadership group member of Ashoka for the last decade and leads its Global Academy for Social Entrepreneurship. She is a founding board member and Chair of the Grameen Foundation.

Allan Rosenfield, Dean of the Mailman School of Public Health, has spent his career fighting for the health and well-being of the most vulnerable populations at home and abroad, especially women. Rosenfield is known for his work on women’s reproductive health and human rights, innovative family planning studies, strategies to address the tragedy of maternal deaths in poor countries, and the HIV/AIDS pandemic, both domestically and globally. He is currently chairman of the New York State Department of Health AIDS Advisory Council, and president-elect of the Association of Schools of Public Health.