Shameran Abed is the director of the BRAC microfinance and ultra poor programmes. BRAC’s microfinance programme serves more than five million clients in seven countries in Asia and Africa, and has total assets exceeding USD 1.7 billion. BRAC’s ground-breaking ultra poor programme has graduated more than 1.7 million households out of the direst forms of poverty and social deprivation and has inspired the global uptake of the ‘graduation model’ to tackle extreme poverty.
Shameran also chairs the board of BRAC Bank’s mobile financial services subsidiary, bKash, and serves on the boards of the Industrial Promotion and Development Company and Guardian Life Insurance Ltd. Additionally, he is the chairman of the Microfinance Network Steering Committee and is also a member of the Microfinance CEO Working Group and the World Economic Forum Financial Inclusion Steering Committee.
Shameran is a lawyer by training, having been made a barrister by the Honourable Society of Lincoln’s Inn in London, UK. He completed his undergraduate studies at Hamilton College in the United States, majoring in economics and minoring in political science.