Pial Islam is a Harvard-educated strategist. He brings over 25 years global experience in South Asia, North America, Europe, and Africa, advising senior management in private, government and non-profit sectors with expertise encompassing policy, strategy, foresight, inclusive growth, innovation, customer centricity, and digital transformation. He has specialist-level skills in advising on transformative growth strategies across several sectors, including financial, telecom, lifestyle, FMCG, dairy, agro, electricity, education, and healthcare sectors. He brings differentiated skills in project management as well as accelerating fact-based decision making and planning across domains using highly structured consultative tools and processes.
Over the last 16 years since 2009, he has been leading a boutique strategy advisory firm in Bangladesh called pi STRATEGY. During this time, he led and successfully delivered over 50 strategic client engagements – over 25 in the private sector (in strategy, competitiveness, business model innovation) and over 25 in the public and non-profit sectors (in policy, innovation, digital transformation). He crafted growth strategy for several financial, telecom, fintech, and retail sector clients. He advised multilateral organizations like the World Bank, Asian Development Bank, United Nations agencies on a wide variety of development programs. He advised foundations and think tanks like Gates Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation, World Economic Forum on several initiatives involving financial inclusion, gender equity and small businesses. He advised government bodies in Bangladesh, United States, United Kingdom, Canada, India, Zambia on initiatives covering financial services, social safety nets, energy and healthcare to identify innovative solutions to systemic challenges. He advised some of the leading NGOs in the world like BRAC, CARE, ActionAid with strategy, competitiveness, and innovation initiatives. Notably, he led strategic planning for Bangladesh Bank’s Banking Sector Reform Taskforce, covering asset quality reviews, new regulations, bank mergers after the 2024 July Revolution.
During 2007-2009, he was recruited as a Global Leadership Fellow by the World Economic Forum – the first from Bangladesh. With WEF, he shaped global agenda on digital ecosystem, competitiveness, inclusive business models and led cross-industry projects such as the Digital Ecosystem project and Global Education Initiative, and he developed strategies for public sector and private sector entities to engage with SDGs using competitive business models that are profitable and inclusive.
During 2001-2006, he was a Consulting Manager with the Strategy & Transformation practice of Capgemini (Ernst & Young), where he contributed to assignments in Europe and North America.
At various points in his career, Pial also worked with a tech venture of Grameen Bank and launched the first web design studio in Bangladesh; consulted with PricewaterhouseCoopers in Canada; and worked as a Research Associate at the Harvard Business School in the US.
He has an undergrad in Computer Science (UManitoba), an MBA (UBC), and an MPA (Harvard) where he was a Mason Fellow. Pial has been published internationally by World Bank, United Nations, World Economic Forum, London School of Economics, and Harvard University.
pi STRATEGY 