Iqbal Quadir, GrameenPhone Founder

Iqbal Quadir is the Founder of GrameenPhone, the Founder and Director of the Legatum Center for Development and Entrepreneurship at MIT, and the founding co-editor of "Innovations: Technology, Governance, Globalization," a journal published by MIT Press. As a kid in rural Bangladesh in 1971, Iqbal Quadir had to walk half a day to another village to find the doctor - who was not there. Twenty years later he felt the same frustration while working at a New York bank, using diskettes to share information during a computer network breakdown. His epiphany: in both cases, "connectivity is productivity." Had he been able to call the doctor, it would have saved him hours of walking for nothing. Partnering with microcredit pioneer GrameenBank, in 1997 Quadir established GrameenPhone, a wireless operator now offering phone services to 100 million rural Bangladeshi. It's become the model for a bottom-up, tech-empowered approach to development.

To date, GrameenPhone has built the largest mobile phone network in the country with investments of nearly $2 billion and a net income of $250 million in 2006. Its rural program is already available in more than 68,000 villages, while helping to create 250,000 micro-entrepreneurs in these villages. Earlier in his career, Quadir served as a vice president of Atrium Capital Corp., an associate of Security Pacific Merchant Bank, both in New York, and a consultant to the World Bank in Washington DC. His work has been recognized by leaders and organizations worldwide as a new and successful approach to sustainable poverty alleviation. The World Economic Forum, based in Geneva, Switzerland, selected him as a “Global Leader for Tomorrow.” He received an MBA and an MA from the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, and a BS with honors from Swarthmore College.