Dr. Mushtaque Reza Chowdhury

Dr. Mushtaque Raza Chowdhury was the vice-chairperson of BRAC, world’s largest NGO. He was also the advisor to the founder and chairperson of BRAC. Previously, he was the interim executive director of BRAC, the founding director of the research and evaluation division and the founding dean of the James P. Grant School of Public Health at BRAC University. Dr. Chowdhury is also a member of the Advisory Council of BRAC Institute of Governance and Development, BRAC University.

He is also a Professor of population and family health at the Mailman School of Public Health of Columbia University, New York. During 2009-2012, he worked as a senior advisor to the Rockefeller Foundation, based in Bangkok, Thailand. He also served as a MacArthur Fellow at Harvard University.

Dr. Chowdhury is a founder of the Bangladesh Education Watch and Bangladesh Health Watch, two civil society watch-dogs on education and health respectively. He is on the board and committees of several organisations and initiatives, including the International Advisory Board of the Centre for Sustainable International Development at the University of Aberdeen. Dr Chowdhury was a coordinator of the UN Millennium Task Force on Child Health and Maternal Health, set up by the former Secretary General Kofi Annan. He is also the Co-Chair of Bangladesh Water Multisector Partnership

He is a co-recipient of the ‘Innovator of the Year 2006’ award from the Marriott Business School of Brigham Young University in USA. He also received the PESON oration medal from the Perinatal Society of Nepal in 2008. He has a wide interest in development, particularly in the areas of education, public health, poverty eradication and environment. Dr Chowdhury has published books and more than 150 articles in peer-reviewed international journals including the International Journal on Education, the Lancet, the Social Science & Medicine, the Scientific American and the New England Journal of Medicine. In 2013, he received the Humanitarian Award from the Distressed Children and Infants International, a group based at Yale University in USA. He is a recipient of the Outstanding Leadership Award given by Dhaka University Statistics Department Alumni Association in 2015.

Dr Chowdhury holds a PhD from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, an MSc from the London School of Economics and a BA from the University of Dhaka.