Tabassum Shahnaz Sakhawat is an education and institutional development specialist with more than 20 years of experience in international development.
Her passion to make a difference in the lives of young girls, who were deprived of the opportunity to education, led her to join The World Bank to design and manage the Female Secondary School Assistance Project (FSSAP) in Bangladesh. Tabassum then worked full-time for the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) where she managed the Bangladesh education portfolio. Subsequently, Tabassum worked for PWRDF (the development agency of the Anglican Church of Canada) in Toronto. Tabassum was involved in strengthening PWRDF’s organizational capacity through the PMET (planning, monitoring, evaluation and transfer into action) process.
She is a trained facilitator and has conducted numerous planning workshops on organizational assessment, strategy planning, human resource development and performance development. Tabassum has worked as a consultant for various international development agencies such as the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation (NORAD), Department for International Development (DFID) UK and GTZ (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Technische Zusammenarbeit, Germany).
Tabassum, who started her career as a school teacher, believes strongly in education being the most powerful tool to shape the next generation. This belief motivates her to continue to work with schools by assisting them in their process of developing and reviewing curriculum, assessing and introducing teaching-learning methods and training teachers. Tabassum also keeps herself connected to the grass-root development by doing voluntary work for NGOs in Bangladesh.
She has a BA in Psychology and a MEd in Educational Administration, Organization and Policy. Tabassum loves to travel. She is the author of several children’s stories. Tabassum likes to spend her free time reading and enjoys cooking fusion food for her family. She lives alternately between her home in Toronto and wherever her consultancy assignments take her.