Asif Saleh
Asif Saleh is the Executive Director of BRAC. He brings a multi-sectoral experience in senior leadership roles in private, public, and non-government arenas, with a proven track record of effectively managing development programming, operational and financial sustainability, and building effective partnerships.
Prior to joining BRAC, he was a policy specialist for the Prime Minister’s Office’s Access to Information (A2i) programme. He spent 12 years in Goldman Sachs in different fin-tech roles and institutional client sales in New York and London, ending his term there as an Executive Director. He has also worked in Glaxo Wellcome, IBM and Nortel. He is a non-resident fellow at the Center for Global Development in Washington, D.C.
Mr Saleh chairs BRAC IT Services Limited, co-chairs BRAC Net, and is on the Board of BRAC Bank, bKash and edotco Bangladesh Ltd.
He was recognised for his work by Asia Society’s Asia 21 programme in 2008, the Bangladeshi American Foundation in 2007, and was selected as an Asia 21 Fellow in 2012. He was selected as a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum in 2013.
Mr Saleh holds a bachelor’s degree in computer science and an MBA from the Stern School of Business, New York University.
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- Model
- Hybrid Social Enterprise
- Sectors
- Gender Inequality; Education
- Headquarters
- Bangladesh
- Areas of Impact
- South Asia, Africa, Afghanistan, Sudan, Uganda, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Tanzania
BRAC
BRAC has been fighting poverty, illiteracy and child mortality, while supporting women's health and development on a large scale in rural Bangladesh for over four decades. BRAC mobilizes the capacity of the poor to improve their own lives through self-organization.
BRAC's programmes address problems such as unemployment, environmental hazards, gender inequality, education and health. In the 1980s for example, its campaign to disseminate oral rehydration therapy for diarrhoeal disease played a major role in halving Bangladesh's infant mortality rate.
BRAC’s clients monitor and evaluate programmes themselves, as well as conduct systematic research and development. As a result BRAC has identified backward and forward market links needed to boost economic opportunities for the poor. When BRAC found that poor women were not profiting from rearing milking cows, it improved the breed of cow (a backward link) and set up a modern dairy (a forward link). Above all, it helped shift the global development paradigm from that of helping needy beneficiaries to encouraging the self-development of villagers, particularly women.
BRAC’s full-time staff of 28,000 has helped 3.8 million poor women establish 100,000 village organizations. Its health programmes reach 10 million people, its non-formal schools cater to 1.2 million children (of which 70% are girls), and its microcredit programme has disbursed US$ 1.8 billion in loans with a reported 98% repayment rate. BRAC is now working in Afghanistan to support reconstruction efforts.
awardees
Our awardees
Gisele Yitamben
Janet Longmore
