Shameran Abed is the executive director of BRAC International. He oversees all of BRAC’s programmatic work in 13 countries across Asia and Africa.

He holds a bachelor’s in economics from Hamilton College in the United States and is a qualified barrister in the UK. Since joining BRAC in 2009, Shameran has been instrumental in bringing its flagship programmes of microfinance and ultra-poor Graduation to global scale. Under his leadership, BRAC’s microfinance portfolio saw impressive growth and a renewed focus on client impact.

Since 2016, Shameran also led BRAC’s ultra-poor Graduation work and played a key role in setting up the Ultra-Poor Graduation Initiative at BRAC International to spearhead global advocacy and support governments in scaling Graduation. In 2021, he took over as executive director of BRAC International.

Shameran has experience on non-profit and corporate boards and currently chairs the board of bKash, BRAC Bank’s mobile financial services subsidiary, and one of the world’s largest mobile money providers, as well as several other boards.