Ms Afshana Choudhury
Joint Director
Centre for Entrepreneurship Development (CED)
Brac University
Afshana is currently working as the Deputy Director of Centre for Entrepreneurship Development (CED) at Brac University (BracU), a leading and one of the most reputed educational institution in Bangladesh. She has over 21 years of experience in the development sector with specialization in the field of entrepreneurship development, capacity development, coordinating as well as designing professional-level training modules (both academic as well as competency-based) for cross-cutting sectors. During her tenure at BracU, Afshana has been involved in planning, coordination and implementation of national and international interventions in the development sector as well as entrepreneurship and skill development programmes. She established and is currently managing the country’s first university-based Business Incubation Centre (BIC) under BracU funded by the World Bank. Under her supervision, over 20 student-led startups are currently operating in the BIC and 3 of them are about to be graduated from the business incubation centre.
Previously, she worked for three years at the Institute for Inclusive Finance and Development (InM) [formerly Institute of Microfinance (InM)], funded by UKAid DFID under PROSPER programme, where she looked after the training division as an Assistant Director. She has developed several training modules on ToT, Entrepreneurship Development and Business Planning, Microfinance Operations and Management, Participatory Managerial Skills and Management, Participatory Rural Appraisal, etc.
Afshana is experienced in leading various research projects such as Participatory Factory Mapping Research (PFMR – RMG factory mapping funded by C&A Foundation), Policy Gap Analysis: A Comparative Analysis of Labor Law/Policy of Asian Countries (CED-funded research), Financial Affordability Study (Sirajganj and Comilla, 10 Communities) under the “Pro-Poor Slum Integration Project” (PPSIP) funded by the World Bank, and social impact assessment of the capacity building program titled “Management Soft Skills Training for Beauticians: Beauty Parlor Management for Young and Adolescent Girls” (funded by Fair and Lovely Foundation of Unilever Bangladesh Ltd), etc. Recently, she led the training support provided for the “Support to Safety Retrofits and Environmental Upgrades in the Bangladeshi RMG Sector (SSREU)” Project, funded by GIZ.
At present, Afshana is working as the Lead Operations Officer of the 4-year project “Mapped in Bangladesh” (MiB), a scaled-up mapping project of PFMR funded by Laudes Foundation (formerly C&A Foundation) and the Kingdom of the Netherlands.
Afshana is a US Department of State Pro-Fellow (Entrepreneurship Fellowship, 2015), and an ITEC (Indian Technical and Economic Cooperation) Fellow (Social Entrepreneurship, 2014), and an Australia Awards Fellow (Entrepreneurship Fellowship, 2016).