BRAC Executive Director Asif Saleh has been named in the 2026 TIME100 Philanthropy list, becoming the first Bangladeshi to receive this recognition since the list’s inception in 2025.
Lead of Media Relations Communications ANM Golam Kibria confirmed the matter on Thursday.
The annual list by TIME magazine recognises 100 of the world’s most influential individuals who are shaping the future of social impact and giving. Asif was honoured in the “Leaders” category alongside prominent figures such as Rajiv J Shah, Idris Elba and Sabrina Dhowre Elba, and Lionel Messi.
Asif was recognised for advancing BRAC’s locally led development model and advocating for a more equitable approach to international aid. TIME highlighted BRAC’s community-driven philosophy and its hybrid funding strategy – which combines grants, investments, community contributions, microfinance, and social enterprises – as a resilient response to global aid cuts.
Regarding the global search for sustainable aid models, TIME noted, “Following last year’s drastic cuts in foreign aid spending, some people have called for a better model for global aid. BRAC, and its executive director Asif Saleh, might have an answer.”
Responding to the recognition, Asif said, “This recognition belongs to the people across Asia and Africa who have partnered with us over the past half a century, and our staff, who work tirelessly to improve the lives of the people in their communities every day.”
Emphasising BRAC’s core philosophy, he added, “Development is not charity. Charity is something that you give to people, where people are passive recipients of it. And what we promote is the opposite, where people are active participants in everything that we do.”
Reflecting on the current global situation, Asif remarked that the world is at an “inflection point” where rising poverty and conflict are symptoms of a lack of ambition regarding equality.
He called for a fundamentally greater ambition to build a genuinely more equal world, stating it “demands a socially just way of pursuing it: one that recognises people as the agents of their own change, not its beneficiaries.”
BRAC was founded in 1972 in the aftermath of the Liberation War to rebuild the nation. Over five decades, it has grown from a small relief effort into one of the world’s largest development organisations, with its Bangladeshi-rooted lessons now being applied across Asia and Africa.
This international recognition affirms that Bangladesh, long viewed as a development success story, is an active contributor to global development thinking rather than just a recipient.
