Born in Bangladesh, Muhammad Yunus left his home country to study Economics in the United States. After getting his Ph.D., he went on to work as Assistant Professor of Economics at Middle Tennessee State University before joining Chittagong University as Head of its Economics Department. In 1976, he joined Grameen Bank in Bangladesh as a Project Manager before becoming the bank's Managing Director in 1983. Muhammad Yunus is one of the pioneers of the microcredit concept. The Grameen Bank grants small loans to the impoverished without requiring collateral. Since 1996, Muhammad Yunus has been serving as an advisor to the government of Bangladesh. He is also a founding member of the Global Academy of Ashoka, an international organization of and for social entrepreneurs. Furthermore, he sits on the Advisory Board of the German Foundation for Entrepreneurship.

In 2006, Muhammad Yunus was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his economic and social work. He has also received several other awards including the World Food Prize in 1994, the Max Schmidheiny Freedom Prize in 1995, the Planetary Consciousness Prize in 1997, the Sydney Peace Prize in 1998, the Seoul Peace Prize in 2006 and the Vision Award in 2007. In 2008, he received the Corine Award for his book A World Without Poverty. Yunus holds multiple honorary doctorates from universities around the world.