Gregory Chen

Managing Director

Strategy

As Managing Director, Gregory Chen is a member of BRAC International’s executive leadership team and oversees the Ultra-Poor Graduation Initiative (UPGI), a global programme building momentum to end extreme poverty by scaling the evidence-backed Graduation approach. Graduation is a flagship program for BRAC and UPGI is a new mode to achieve scale by supporting the expansion of government-led programming. BRAC’s goals are ambitious: to expand high-quality, government-led Graduation to 5 million households and dramatically make advances on SDG1.

Chen has committed his career to spreading high-impact innovations tested and developed in the Global South. Chen spent nearly two decades with the Consultative Group to Assist the Poor (CGAP), a global partnership housed at the World Bank that works to advance the lives of people in poverty through financial inclusion. Chen served in multiple capacities at CGAP: as the representative to South Asia, a specialist in technology and finance, and as a member of CGAP’s leadership team overseeing CGAP’s policy work. 

Chen is based in Washington, DC. Before settling in the U.S., Chen had lived in South Asia for more than 25 years and has worked across more than a dozen countries in Africa. He is a frequent public speaker and has guest lectured at American University, the Boulder Institute for Microfinance, BRAC University, Johns Hopkins, Tufts, and Yale. He has a master’s degree from Harvard’s Kennedy School and a bachelor’s degree from Wesleyan University.