Sadaffe Abid ’95
Sadaffe Abid is the cofounder of CIRCLE, a social enterprise that helps women executives and entrepreneurs develop the capacity to exercise leadership. She has worked on leadership development programs and women’s empowerment in the United Arab Emirates, Pakistan, and regionally.
Formerly, Abid held the positions of CEO and COO of Kashf Foundation, one of Forbes Top 50 microfinance institutions, which she helped grow from a pilot program working out of two rooms into an organization that served 300,000 women clients and disbursed $200 million in microloans in Pakistan. During her tenure, Kashf received the AGFUND International Prize and Grameen Trust Microfinance Excellence Award.
Abid consults the International Finance Corporation on gender diversity and is a social entrepreneur-in-residence at INSEAD. Since 2014, she has been a lecturer on social entrepreneurship at CEDEP, INSEAD. Her work at Kashf is profiled in Nicholas Kristof’s book, Half the Sky, and Isobel Coleman’s book, Paradise Beneath Her Feet. Abid is board member of the Harvard UAE Club and a TEDx INSEAD speaker. She completed a master’s degree at the Harvard Kennedy School, the Advanced Management Program at INSEAD, and a BA at Mount Holyoke College.
March 8, 2016
