Iftekhar Karim

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  • A.Y. 2023/2024 (Cycle 39)
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Iftekhar has more than eight years of multifaceted and cross-sectoral experiences spanning four continents, and earned a Master’s in Leadership for Sustainability from Malmo University in Sweden as a Swedish Institute (SI) Scholar commissioned by the Swedish government, and another Master’s in Management, Economics and Consumer Studies from Wageningen University in the Netherlands as a Huygens Scholar commissioned by the Dutch Ministry of Education, Culture and Science. Iftekhar successfully completed his PhD in Management (Entrepreneurship) at Luiss University in Rome, Italy as Luiss Doctoral Fellow, and was awarded his doctorate degree in 2022

Prior to this, Iftekhar has taught Entrepreneurship and Business/Management courses at University of Liberal Arts Bangladesh – ULAB as a Lecturer in Management, and thus supervised diversified youth entrepreneurship projects. Under the Australian government Department of Education and Training Endeavour Executive Fellowship program as a Global High Achiever based in Melbourne, he collaborated with Oaktree HQ (largest youth-led and youth-run organization in Australia) in order to review and revamp their youth entrepreneurship and leadership (YEL) model given the role of Oaktree in poverty alleviation, youth sustainability and social innovations for volunteer management and nonprofit sector of Australia, with relevance for scalability across the globe. Further, As British Council’s Charles Wallace Professional Visiting Fellow in London, he also collaborated with UK Youth HQ (UK’s largest national platform for informal youth education under the patronage of Royal Highness Princess Anne) on youth development based partnership building and multi-stakeholder collaboration schemes. Previously, Iftekhar worked with Management for Development – MDF Training and Consultancy and Euroconsult Mott MacDonald in the Netherlands to support global branch offices in business development and acquisition activities for Dutch Foreign Ministry and European Union funded international development consultancy. Prior to that, his robust internship experience with Business in Development – BiD Network (a Dutch nonprofit) based in Amsterdam and funded by DFID and USAID, eventually added valuable private sector development strategies (i.e. start-ups development, entrepreneurship mentoring, skills development, wealth creation and base of the pyramid (BoP) strategies) to Iftekhar’s resource-base. Apart from donor liaison and stakeholder management, Iftekhar also gained useful governmental relations in nonprofit and developmental projects during his tenure with federally owned German Development Cooperation – GIZ Bangladesh at German House. Through all these cross-sector and cross-disciplinary experiences, by degrees he developed strong sustainable project management, team building, capacity development, organizational strengthening and international collaboration skills which are highly relevant for emerging global sectors. Iftekhar enjoys conducting state-of-the-art research on entrepreneurship ecosystem and organizational science, and has a strong passion for strategy building and policy advocacy for triple bottom line (people, planet and profit), and also for tripartite collaborations involving business, nonprofit and state.