Shamim Hamid is a Research Fellow at the Bangladesh Institute of Development Studies. She holds a Masters in Public Administration from the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts and was the first woman in South Asia to be selected as a Mason Fellow in the same Institute. Her research interests include Women and Development, national income accounts, microcredit, poverty, and natural resources. She has worked as a consultant to FAO, WFP, IFAD, ADB, the World Bank and the Government of Bangladesh. Her hobby is writing short stories.