Ms. Nurjahan Begum was one of the earliest associates of Professor Muhammad Yunus when the latter started the Grameen Bank Project in 1976 in the village Jobra in Chittagong district of Bangladesh. A student of Chittagong University, Ms. Nurjahan played an important role in organizing poor rural women in Grameen Bank’s grassroots groups in the bank’s earliest and most challenging days when rural women were hardly allowed to go out of doors and speak to non-relative males, let alone take a loan from an institution. Ms. Nurjahan worked as Deputy Managing Director of Grameen Bank and also worked as its Acting Managing Director when the bank’s founder Professor Muhammad Yunus retired from the bank in May 2011. She retired from Grameen Bank on 14 August 2012, serving about 35 years in the bank.

Ms. Nurjahan is also working as director in a number of Grameen companies. Ms. Nurjahan was awarded, besides various other awards and honors, the Susan M. Davis Lifetime Achievement Award for 2008 by Grameen Foundation. She was also awarded World Summit Millennium Development Goals Award 2009 and the Vision Award 2009.