As a young girl in Dhaka, Bangladesh, Durreen Shahnaz would watch as the men in her family left home to go pray at the mosque. The women often stayed behind to feed beggars outside their home. “We didn’t have much,” Shahnaz remembers. “It was a post-war nation ravished with famine, but we all had to do our part. It was important for us not just give something to others but also to help them stand on their feet.”
That early lesson would inspire Shahnaz and set her on a path that took her from Morgan Stanley to the Grameen Bank and from academia to publishing. She was the first Bangladeshi woman to work on Wall Street and then the first Bangladeshi woman to attend the Wharton School of Business. But at heart Shahnaz was an entrepreneur — a successful one — and a woman who dreamed big. She wanted to change the lives of millions. Read more