Announcing Mishal Karim as the Chair of Thrive’s Global Investment Impact Initiative.
A leader in fresh food and investor and venture-builder in Bangladesh is taking the reins of Thrive’s global impact investments.
Mishal Karim, co-founder of Direct Fresh, one of Bangladesh’s first farm-to-table ventures, is the new chair of Thrive’s Global Investment Impact Initiative.
Mishal brings decades of business experience as a leader in expanding access to fresh, healthy food for Bangladeshis. Over the years, he has consistently backed Thrive’s school-based nutrition programs in Bangladesh. He said it aligns with his belief that children’s access to food and education is the most powerful lever for breaking generational poverty.
“I’m honored to support Thrive,” Mishal said. “Their work to ensure all kids have access to healthy meals benefits us all. Children are the future of Bangladesh, and we should all be invested in ensuring they are healthy and get a good education.”
In his new role for Thrive, Mishal will lead a distinguished group of business and investment leaders to elevate Thrive’s global profile, expand its funding base, and secure long‑term sustainability for school nutrition programs.
Mishal founded and leads Agile Minds Solutions, a diversified investment firm operating across numerous sectors, including food distribution, renewable energy, digital marketing, medical products, and big data.
Mishal’s success in both the business and development worlds makes him well-suited for the task. He knows how to combine smart investment with real-life impact. Under his leadership, Direct Fresh collaborated with the UN World Food Program and other humanitarian actors to support food access in vulnerable communities, including refugee settings and low‑income worker populations.
His work has raised farmer incomes, reduced intermediaries, and expanded access to safe, affordable food. He is known as a credible voice at the intersection of business, impact, and national development.
Even better: Mishal is a longtime supporter of Thrive. Like many investors, he knows Thrive’s reliability and consistent impact make it more than just a charity: school-based nutrition is a strategic investment.
In 13 years of delivering school meals, Thrive has only missed three days. Even during the pandemic, which closed schools for a few months, the Thrive local team coordinated safe distribution of family food packs for students enrolled in partner schools. Thrive schools maintain an average monthly attendance of 95%, well above the national average of 81%, demonstrating a direct link between daily meals and keeping children in classrooms rather than in labor or on the streets.
With one of the world’s largest youth populations, Bangladesh’s long‑term competitiveness depends on whether today’s children stay in school, stay nourished, and develop the skills needed for a productive, future-proof economy.
That’s why the business community is increasingly engaging in ESG, impact investing, and corporate social responsibility.
“MIshal’s guidance has been integral to our progress and to advancing our mission of ensuring that every child in Bangladesh has access to a daily school meal,” said Thrive co-founder Priscilla Heffelfinger. “We know he is the perfect fit to guide us into a future in which more people invest in children’s health and Bangladesh’s future.”
ABOUT THRIVE
Founded in 2012, Thrive’s mission is to deliver healthy food to hungry children in the world’s poorest areas. Thrive partners with schools to provide more than 15,000 meals to schoolchildren each week in Bangladesh and the Philippines. These efforts help improve nutrition, boost school attendance, and increase readiness to learn. Each meal provides up to 50% of a child’s daily nutritional needs. In the past 13 years, Thrive has delivered nearly five million nutritious school meals. For more information, visit www.thrive-global.org.
ABOUT AGILE MINDS
Agile Minds Solutions Limited, founded in 2020 by Mishal Karim, brings together a diverse and dynamic group of companies under one banner, which includes investments in food distribution for large organizations like UNDP, WFP and many more multinational and local conglomerates, along with investments in digital marketing, PR and branding, renewable energy space with cross sectional interests in solar, wind and hydro power generation, dairy production, disinfectant factory, medical products, PPE import and distribution, big data as well as robotics engineering.
The inception of Agile Minds Solutions Limited came to be with a focus on a very diverse and talented management team by recruiting and partnering with an extremely talented and adept group of people, celebrating their intelligence and capabilities.
Contact:
Priscilla Heffelfinger, Co-founder and CEO
[email protected]
+13132304774
Sharmin Akhi, Thrive Bangladesh Operations Manager
[email protected]
+880 1676-905388
Sadia Moyeen, Thrive Board Member
+880 1713 032334
[email protected]
