Sir Fazle Hasan Abed KCMG a biographical sketch

Sir Fazle Hasan Abed was born on 27 April in 1936 in Baniachang village of Habiganj district. His father was Siddique Hasan and mother was Syeda Sufia Khatun.

Siddique Hasan was the sub-registrar of Habiganj. Siddique Hasan and his brothers attended St Xavier's School and College in Kolkata.

Sir Fazle's paternal grandfather was Khanbahadur Rafiqul Islam and his maternal grandfather was Khanbahadur Syed Moazzem Uddin Hossain, who hailed from Austagram in Kishoreganj district. Syed Moazzem Uddin Hossain was a provincial minister, first for agriculture and later for education, during the end of the British rule. Sir Fazle's other paternal grandfather Nawab Justice Sir Syed Shamsul Huda served the executive committee of the Bengal Presidency Governor as its member. He was among the chief initiators of the University of Dhaka.

Sir Fazle went to several schools, firstly Habiganj Government High School, then Cumilla Zilla School, and finally Pabna Zilla School, from where he passed his matriculation in 1952. He passed higher secondary exams from Dhaka College in 1954. He was admitted to the University of Dhaka to study honours in physics but did not complete it and moved to England. There he studied naval architecture at the University of Glasgow in Scotland for two years but left the department to study accounting. He completed cost and management accounting in 1962.

Sir Fazle returned to the then-East Pakistan in 1968. He joined Shell Oil in 1970 as the head of finance and was posted in Chattogram. After a deadly cyclone hit the coast on 12 November 1970, claiming at least 300,000 lives, Sir Fazle, along with friends and colleagues, travelled to Monpura, one of the worst-hit remote islands, to distribute relief. Later, they formed an organisation called HELP to continue the relief operations.

When the Liberation War broke out in 1971, Sir Fazle resigned from Shell Oil and moved back to London to campaign for Bangladesh's independence.

Sir Fazle arrived in London in May 1971. Along with a number of like-minded people, he founded two organisations, Help Bangladesh and Action Bangladesh, to campaign for Bangladesh's independence. Action Bangladesh campaigned to garner public and political support from Western governments, particularly to stop atrocities by the Pakistani army. Help Bangladesh focused on raising funds for freedom fighters.

In 1972, Sir Fazle returned to independent Bangladesh. Before returning, he sold his small London flat to initially fund the relief work he was about to undertake for the refugees coming back from India. He established Bangladesh Rehabilitation Assistance Committee (BRAC) and began relief and rehabilitation work in Sulla and Dirai upazilas of Sunamganj.

The first phase of BRAC's intervention in Sulla commenced on 1 February 1972, which is the official date of BRAC's establishment.

In 1973, BRAC began providing microloans. Sir Fazle was one of the earliest proponents of microfinance in Bangladesh. He aimed to help poor communities overcome poverty through microloans. Later, BRAC also pioneered the 'graduation approach', a model for assisting people to sustainably overcome extreme poverty. Studies by renowned institutions proved the effectiveness of this model, which has been adopted and replicated in over 40 countries as of 2019.

Over its five decades of operations, BRAC has innovated many successful community-driven social and economic empowerment models to sustainably fight poverty and extreme poverty across continents. BRAC began international operations in 2002 in Afghanistan and runs development programmes in 11 countries across Asia and Africa, including Bangladesh.

NGO Advisor, a Geneva-based independent media entity, ranked BRAC the world's number one NGO for four years in a row, from 2016 to 2019, for its innovative, cost-effective, and evidence-based programmes.

Sir Fazle led BRAC as its executive director from 1972 to 2001. He then assumed the position of chairperson and held it till 2019, retiring on 1 August 2019 to become its chairperson emeritus.

Sir Fazle Hasan Abed founded BRAC University in 2001. He served as the chairman of its board of trustees from its founding year till 2019, retiring on 24 July 2019.

Sir Fazle also founded BRAC Bank in 2001. He was its chairperson in two phases, from 2001-2008 and from 2013-2019, retiring on 26 August 2019.