Nasif Khan

Nasif Khan is an affiliated nonresident expert at the Council on International Law, Order, and Security (CILOS). His work focuses on the nexus of prosperity, political and international governance, and sustainability in a digitally enabled and climate-constrained world.

Nasif is a senior public policy and international relations professional with extensive experience across international development, humanitarian affairs, and the private sector. He currently advises government, private-sector, and academic clients on issues at the intersection of investment, sustainability, and digital transformation to advance shared prosperity. Prior to this, he was Chief of Staff and Head of Strategic Partnerships at BRAC, one of the world’s largest global development organizations and a nonprofit-social enterprise hybrid, with an annual budget of USD 1 billion, and a workforce of 100,000 people. At BRAC, he worked across strategy, partnerships, policy advocacy, climate change, financial inclusion, digital transformation, and large-scale public-service program delivery reaching over 100 million people annually, including during the Rohingya refugee response and COVID-19 response. He also managed the governance of a USD 400 million private-sector investment portfolio spanning banking and technology, and raised over USD 200 million in development financing.

His research and writing examine interlinked challenges around prosperity, political and international governance, and sustainability, especially in the context of climate change, democratic backsliding and political polarization, conflicts within and between nations, increasing economic inequality, growing investment in artificial intelligence, systemic racism, and other forms of injustice. While these are vast topics, his writing tries to make sense of how the world might transition from its current set of challenges, how these transitions may affect inequality within and between countries, and whether it is possible to build a world of shared prosperity.

In his most recent writing, he focuses on democratic transition, elite power structures, NGO-state relations, and the future of development. His regional focus is Asia and the United States.

Nasif holds a Master in Public Administration (MPA) from Harvard Kennedy School (HKS), where his studies focused on emerging technologies and their implications for society, economic growth and political economy, state capacity for development, climate change, the international economy and foreign policy, and system-level change. He was formerly an Education Fellow at the World Innovation Summit for Education (WISE), an initiative of Qatar Foundation.