NextBillion - An Initiative of the William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan

Raiya Kishwar Ashraf is Manager of Innovation Ecosystem and Partnership at BRAC’s Social Innovation Lab. A development practitioner from Bangladesh with six years of experience in program development and research across poverty alleviation, education, and financial inclusion, Raiya is deeply passionate about sustainable policy and program design. She currently leads the design of interventions and research to accelerate financial inclusion by integrating mobile money across BRAC’s programs and internal operations platforms in partnership with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Before this, she was with BRAC’s Research and Evaluation Division assisting the monitoring and impact evaluation of poverty alleviation, economic development and education programs. She also brings experience in supporting social enterprises and Global South governments to leverage technology, research data, and design methodology to improve the impact of development programming and policy. Raiya holds a Master in Public Policy from Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore, and a BA in Politics, Philosophy and Economics from Asian University for Women.