Sir Fazle Hasan Abed is a social worker and the founder and chairman of BRAC, the largest NGO in the world. Fazle Hasan Abed was born in 1936 into a landed family in Baniachong in Bangladesh’s Habiganj district. Fazle Abed's father and his three uncles were adopted by Syed Shamsul Huda, who was one of the most influential personalities in Calcutta. Under Syed Shamsul Huda's direction, Fazle Abed's father Syed Mustafa Ali and his three uncles received education from the prestigious St. Xavier's College, Calcutta. However Fazle Abed's family moved out of Calcutta and he matriculated from Pabna Zilla School and went on to complete his higher secondary education from Dhaka College. Then He left home to attend Glasgow University, where, and in an effort to break away from tradition and do something radically different - he studied Naval Architecture. Later he joined the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants in London.
The 1971 Liberation War of Bangladesh had a profound effect on him, then in his thirties, a professional accountant who was holding a senior corporate executive position at Shell Oil. The war dramatically changed the direction of his life; he left his job and moved to London to devote himself to Bangladesh's War of Independence. There, he helped to initiate a campaign called "Help Bangladesh" to organize funds to raise awareness about the war in Bangladesh.
Fazle Hasan Abed, the founder and chairperson of the world's largest NGO, he is to be knighted by the Queen of England for his services to alleviating poverty in Bangladesh and abroad. Abed is the first Bangladeshi to receive the honour since 1947, though he is the second person in his family to be knighted. In 1913 his great uncle, Justice Nawab Sir Syed Shamsul Huda also received a knighthood.
Sir Fazle has received numerous national and international awards for his achievements in leading BRAC, including the David Rockefeller Bridging Leadership Award (2008), the