Kamal Quadir, a practitioner who focuses his efforts on technology that brings about social progress by enabling people to advance economically. He is the Founder and CEO of bKash, a digital financial service that offers millions of unbanked and underbanked people access to financial services through basic cellphones or smartphones in Bangladesh.

Earlier Kamal founded CellBazaar, a communication company, that has introduced a cellphone based electronic marketplace for developing countries. Kamal is a founding member of Open World Initiatives, a Lausanne, Switzerland based organization of young thinkers. He is involved with Anwarul Quadir Foundation and Shireen Quadir Trust that recognize innovations in developing countries. He received the Tech Award in 2007 for “Applying Technology to Benefit Humanity.” He is a First Mover Fellow of The Aspen Institute. In 2009 the World Economic Forum and TED have respectively selected him as a Young Global Leader and a TED Fellow. He is an accomplished artist whose work is in the collection of Bangladesh National Museum. He has a BA from Oberlin College and an MBA from the Sloan School of Management at MIT.