Runa Khan

Runa Khan is a Bangladeshi social entrepreneur and the founder and executive director of Friendship NGO. Friendship is based on Khan's model of "integrated development," meaning it addresses problems in multiple sectors, including health, education, disaster management and economic development in communities where it is involved, rather than specializing in one of these. Khan won the Rolex Awards for Enterprise in 2006 for work through Friendship to preserve the declining craft of traditional boat building in Bangladesh.

In 1996 Khan established Contic as a tourism company which gives tours on traditional wooden boats. Earlier, she wrote text-books for children with the aim of moving away from rote learning, an effort that won her the Ashoka Fellowship in 1994. She is the Country Chair for Bangladesh at Global Dignity.

Early life and education
Khan was born on November 17, 1958, to an aristocratic family descended from the zamindars or landowners of Bengal. She studied at the Dhaka Preparatory and Farmview International Schools. She went on to study geography at the Lady Brabourne College, Kolkata and did a second BA in humanities from the Eden Mohila College in Dhaka. Runa Khan's grandparents came from a privileged background. Her mother's family was originally from Afghanistan. They were descendants of the Karranis, the last dynasty of the 16th-century Bengal Sultanate. When she was as young as 9, Runa's father, Alim Khan, used to receive Zen monks, Hindu priests, Taizé Brothers and ambassadors for dinner and include her in conversations about music and philosophy.

Khan was first married at the age of 20 to one of her direct cousins, and had two children before that marriage ended. Runa Khan wanted to continue her work and studies in geography. But her first husband did not allow her to do that.

Later, in 1996, she married French adventurer and sailor Yves Marre, who brought to Bangladesh the river barge that would eventually become the Lifebuoy Friendship Hospital. Runa had a son, Jean, with Yves in 1998. Eventually, in 2019, this couple got separated.

Career
In 1988, Khan started a boutique to provide work for Biharis and indigenous Bangladeshis. In 1992 she joined her family printing business. In 1995 she founded a security company. In 1994 Yves Marre arrived in Bangladesh with a retired river barge which he wanted to donate to a charitable cause. Khan's father first suggested converting it into a hospital. Khan created Friendship to carry out the project. The hospital ship was located to cater to the inhabitants of char areas, or regions with continuously moving landscapes, which were deprived of usual government infrastructure. Friendship NGO plans to launch 5 more hospital ships.

Runa Khan was awarded as a Social Entrepreneur by the Schwab Foundation in 2012 at the “Meeting of New Champions” in Tianjin. In 2008, Khan won the IDB Prize for Women’s Contribution to Development. In 2016, she was awarded the Green Award by Positive Planet.

In 2019 she started the lifestyle brand Friendship Colours of the Chars, a leading slow fashion brand in Bangladesh, featuring products made by women in char communities. FCOC now has 3 retail outlets—1 in Luxembourg and 2 in Dhaka—and exports products to France, New Zealand and the USA.

An interview of Runa Khan was published by Harvard Business School in 2019 as part of a series of conversations with Harvard faculty titled Creating Emerging Markets.

On September 11, 2023 Runa Khan hosted the French president, Emmanuel Macron on Friendship's traditional panshi boat, the Flèche d'Or, the largest and one of the last of its kind, during an official visit to the country. They were accompanied by climate scientist Saleemul Huq, high-ranking government officials of Bangladesh and France, and young climate activists on the boat trip, which cruised the Turag River. During the ride, Macron and his fellow tourists discussed climate initiatives and the commitments the president had made to his counterpart Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina earlier in his visit.

Works
The Flower Maiden and Other Stories and Rani Kanchan Mala and Other Stories were two collections of fairy tales published by The University Press Limited in 2000. The stories are based on traditional Bangladeshi folk tales, including some from Thakurmar Jhuli.

Beyond the North-South Dichotomy was a chapter in Reimagining Civil Society Collaborations in Development, published by Routledge in 2023.