Hassan is a senior executive, advisor and author on global affairs, with a track record of building and leading teams, organisations and large-scale initiatives, working in complex stakeholder environments.
He is a co-founder of Global Nation, a think/do-tank that reimagines international cooperation. Global Nation advises the world’s leading institutions working on tackling humanity’s greatest challenges, including the Gates Foundation, WHO, the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, the Wellcome Trust, and national governments. It also receives grant funding to pursue thought-leadership and movement-building for a fairer international system. Hassan is also a senior advisor to the WHO Assistant Director-General for Pandemic and Epidemic Intelligence.
Hassan spent a decade at the Gates Foundation, the world’s largest philanthropy, where he served as Deputy Director for Global Policy and Advocacy. He built a range of large-scale development initiatives and was closely involved in global policy responses, including during the COVID-19 pandemic. He was also responsible for the foundation’s geographic teams for the Middle East, Pakistan and East Asia and advised Bill and Melinda Gates on their engagement in those countries.
Prior to joining the Gates Foundation, Hassan spent 5 years at McKinsey where he led transformations in education and economic development in Pakistan, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, UAE and Bahrain.
Hassan has written extensively about global development and politics. His first book, The Responsible Globalist, was published by Penguin Allen Lane in 2019. It was described by Bill Gates as “thoughtful and well written”, by Riz Ahmed as “visionary” and by Richard Curtis as “the book I would have written if I was smart enough”.
He holds a double-first class Classics and Arabic B.A. from Oxford in with 3 university prizes, and a Middle Eastern Studies M.A. from Harvard, where he was awarded the Von Clemm Fellowship.
Not available to supervise PhD students
Research Cluster affiliation
International Institutions Research Cluster