Kamal Ahmad

Ahmad was born in Dhaka, Bangladesh. He grew up during the 1971 Bangladesh Liberation War. At age 14, Ahmad established a series of internationally-funded afternoon schools for adolescents who served as domestic workers in Dhaka.

Ahmad moved to the U.S. in 1980 to attend Phillips Exeter Academy. At Exeter, he led the Third World Society and the Student-Faculty Committee on Corporate Responsibility which focused on the question of corporate divestment from apartheid-era South Africa. Ahmad entered Harvard College in 1983. As a Harvard freshman, Ahmad founded and managed the Overseas Development Network, a consortium of 70 university student groups across the United States dedicated to the promotion of international development projects. In 1987, Ahmad won TIME Magazine’s second annual College Achievement Award for “20 of the most outstanding juniors in America.”

Ahmad's father is Professor Kamaluddin Ahmad, a famed biochemist who pioneered the study of biochemistry and nutritional sciences in the Indian subcontinent. Professor Ahmad established one of the region’s first biochemistry departments at the University of Dhaka in 1957.

Ahmad’s grandfather, Dr. M.O. Ghani was one of the first Bengali-Indian Muslims to receive a Ph.D. in Chemistry from the United Kingdom. He went on to become Founder-Vice Chancellor of Bangladesh Agricultural University in Mymensing, Vice Chancellor of the University of Dhaka, Pakistan's Ambassador to East Africa, and an Independent Member of the Parliament in Bangladesh.

Kamal with AUW students.

Following graduation from Harvard College in 1988, Ahmad served on the staffs of the World Bank; Rockefeller Foundation; UNICEF; and the General Counsel of the Asian Development Bank based in Manila, Philippines. In 1993, Ahmad entered University of Michigan Law School. In 1996, he joined the New York law firm of Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver, & Jacobson LLP (1996-2000). Ahmad also practiced law in London with the U.S. law firm of Mayer Brown LLP (2001-2002).

In 1998, while practicing law in New York City, Ahmad conceived and co-directed the World Bank/UNESCO Task Force on Higher Education & Society.

In September 2006, the Parliament of Bangladesh ratified the landmark Charter of the Asian University for Women. The Charter endowed the University with institutional autonomy, academic freedom, and embedded it in the principle of non-discrimination. In 2005 and 2006, the Goldman Sachs Foundation and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation provided the start-up funds which enabled AUW to become operational in 2008.

Ahmad is a recipient of a number of awards including the United Nations Gold Peace Medal & Citation Scroll, given by the Paul G. Hoffman Awards Fund for “outstanding contribution to national and international development.” In 2002, Ahmad was elected as the “Global Leader for Tomorrow” by the World Economic Forum. Ahmad was also given the John Phillips Award from Phillips Exeter Academy. The award is given to “an alumnus or alumna of the Academy, still living at the time of nomination, whose life demonstrates John Phillips’ ideal of goodness and knowledge united in noble character and usefulness to mankind. John Phillips Awards winners have “contributed significantly to the welfare of community, country or humanity, beyond any volunteer service to the Academy.”