Rashed Hasan has a deep faith in God and shares a deepening concern about the welfare of the human race. He was born in a third-world Muslim country but was fortunate to have been educated in some of the finest institutions in the Western world. As he traveled throughout Muslim lands, he saw poverty, lack of education, rises in conservative thinking, and a lack of empowerment and self-governance on large scales. Yet he was fascinated by the humility and God-consciousness of the average person. As he traveled around the Western world, he witnessed vigorous intellectual discourses, unprecedented economic well-being, and awesome technological innovations but was dismayed by the absence of humility, the lack of respect for human equality, the reappearance of far-right groups/racism, and the rise of income disparities to an alarming proportion.
Rashed has a long career in industry, management consulting, and technology entrepreneurship. He worked for premier management consulting firms such as Booz | Allen | Hamilton and Ernst & Young. He has worked for and consulted major global corporations in automotive, health care, energy, media, pharmaceutical, transportation, building materials, et cetera, which included companies like Ford Motor, Alyeska Pipeline, Pfizer, Lucas Aerospace, CNN, Monsanto, Westinghouse, GAF, and so on. He cofounded several technology companies in health care informatics and big data analytics. He has also established social ventures in Bangladesh in software and health care.
Along the way he has also founded and led several faith-based, grassroots political, youth leadership, and immigrant advocacy organizations in the United States in collaboration with the US Department of Justice, PA Department of Health, Jewish Healthcare Foundation, Heinz Endowment, and other philanthropic groups. He also worked with multinational donor agencies such as USAID, Swedish Development Fund, IFC, and the Abu Dhabi Development Fund for social ventures and nonprofit initiatives.
Rashed currently teaches as a professor at the School of Business at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, the largest university in the commonwealth of Virginia. He also serves as the executive in residence at the Business for a Better World Center, which aspires to engage businesses, public officials, nonprofits, faculty, and students to challenge prevailing business, economic, and social norms to better our world and enrich our pedagogy with holistic understanding of how to make business a positive force in the world. He also founded and serves on the board of a nonprofit, MyLLife Inc. (www.myllife.org) in Alexandria, Virginia.
Rashed lives in Alexandria, Virginia, United States, a town known for its historical connection to the American Revolution and George Washington, one of the Founding Fathers. He devotes part of his time managing a boutique consulting company and is actively involved in community dialogues and building relationships at professional, personal, and community levels with special attention to and interest in young people—who question the world as it is and aspire to change the world to be a better place. While not working he can be found reading books, traveling, cooking meals, and gardening (with limited success) with his wife, to whom plants are no less dear than her own children.
Rashed has a bachelor’s of science and a master’s of science in mechanical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and a master’s of business administration in finance and operations from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Further information on the book and the author can be found at the book’s website, www.rashedhasan.com.