Md. Abdul Awal completed his studies in Agricultural Economics from Bangladesh Agricultural University, Mymensingh and started his career in Banking as a senior officer with a state-owned commercial Bank of Bangladesh in 1980. While in Sonali Bank, he pioneered innovating and developing three Microcredit & Microenterprise products He joined Credit and Development Forum (CDF) as Director in 2004 and promoted to the position of the Executive Director (CEO) in 2009. He also worked for Palli Karma-Sahayak Foundation (PKSF) – a wholesale funding agency, for some time as Microenterprise Specialist.
In CDF, Awal has been very successfully widening the network and partnership with the organizations-at home (MFIs, banks-private, public & foreign, donor agencies, research organizations, Federation of NGOs in Bangladesh, etc) and abroad (Microcredit Summit Campaign, SEEP Network, BWTP, INAFI, SAMN, etc).
Awal very successfully completed different overseas post-graduates’ trainings at Univ of Bradford (UK), Kenya School of Monetary Studies-KSMS (Nairobi, Kenya), Naropa Univ. (Colorado, USA), Asian Institute of Management (Manila) and Harvard Business School, Boston, MA. He participated in many overseas summits/conferences on microcredits, e.g, Microcredit Summits in Delhi, New York, Dhaka, Amman(Jordan) , Mexico, Halifax (Canada), Bali (Indonesia) & Manila (the Philippines), Abu Dhabi, BWTP’s Asia Network Summits & Forum’s Meetings in Beijing, Hanoi, Colombo, Manila, Cambodia and Shanghai and SPTF Annual Meetings & Conferences in Den Bosch in the Netherlands, Jordan & Panama City; Volunteers conference in Amsterdam, SEEP Global Summit in Washington D.C. (every year he has to attend this meeting). He led many exposure visits on microfinance (e.g., Indonesia, India, Kenya and Nepal, China, Vietnam and Kenya). Md. Abdul Awal, Executive Director, CDF chaired/spoke in many overseas microcredit events, namely Microcredit Summits, SEEP’s Global Network Summit in Washington D.C., Asia Microfinance Investment Conference in Singapore, Asia Microfinance Forum’s Conference in Hanoi, Colombo, Shanghai and Manila, Convergence 2015 held in Paris and European Microfinance Platform held in Luxembourg, m etc. He is a member on BWTP Advisory Council based in Brisbane, Australia & SAMN (promoted by ACTED in Paris) Board of Directors. Currently, he’s chairperson of SAMN.
