Iqbal Z. Quadir is the founder and director of the The Legatum Center for Development and Entrepreneurship at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and the founder of Grameenphone in Bangladesh, which provides effective telephone access throughout the country. From 2001 to 2004, Mr. Quadir taught at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. He holds a BS with honors from Swarthmore College and both an MBA and an MA from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.
Working in the private sector early in my career, I gained an appreciation for commerce as a powerful force for meeting economic and social challenges and, for that reason, naturally thought in commercial terms when attempting to bring affordable mobile telephony to Bangladesh. In fact, when I conceived what is now Grameenphone, I made a conscious decision to organize it as a for-profit company.
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