Shahnaz Rahat
Trainer
Shahnaz holds a master’s in business administration from the Institute of business administration, Karachi, Pakistan, and a master’s in public administration from the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, Boston, MA, USA.
Shahnaz has 32 years of experience in leading projects that promote effective and sustainable socio-economic development. She has hands-on experience in managing every stage of the programming cycle, i.e. design, inception, grass-roots implementation, monitoring and evaluation for multilateral and bilateral agencies, governments, NGOs and the private sector for sustainable socio-economic development. During her tenure as senior Group Head, Pakistan Poverty Alleviation Fund, she managed 4-underperforming programs to the value of US $400 million, and with the support of her teams, was able to steer them from an unsatisfactory rating to that of satisfactory and highly satisfactory.
Shahnaz is an acknowledged instructional designer, known for creating experiential and visualized learning material and training manuals designed for semi to non-literate target audiences. She has national and international experience in designing cascade architecture for large scale capacity development rollouts, where hundreds of thousands have benefitted from training and complementary (plus) interventions, i.e. monitoring, mentoring and coaching, feedback mechanisms, and documentation.
As a serial entrepreneur, Shahnaz has established two successful training and consulting companies. Currently, she is the Chief Executive Officer, Mera Maan Pvt. Ltd, which offers capacity development services in a wide range of subjects, including local government and elections; livelihoods, enterprise and social enterprise development, especially for vulnerable and excluded groups and persons with different abilities; social mobilization and community development; gender, human rights and governance; WASH, health, education; management and institutional development; and youth, leadership and diversity for peace. Her work has allowed her a comfortable interface with stakeholders at micro, meso, and macro levels, including members from rural and urban communities, District, Tehsil and Union Council Mayors and Deputy Mayors, elected women councillors, and representatives from the public, private and civil society organizations.
Shahnaz works extensively in all provinces of the country, including Punjab, Sindh, KPK, Balochistan, and Gilgit-Baltistan. She has also worked across countries and cultures, supporting multi-sector development projects in Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Canada, China, Egypt, India, Iran, Kenya, Kyrgyzstan, Nepal, Philippines, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Tajikistan, Thailand, Uganda, USA, and Uzbekistan.
Shahnaz is a team player, well able to strategically handle challenging situations and demanding colleagues.
