Vice President for Innovation and Sustainable Development 

Mohammad Bhuiyan, Ph.D.

Tuskegee University President Gilbert L. Rochon has appointed Mohammad Bhuiyan as vice president for innovation and sustainable development. He will also be a tenured entrepreneurship professor in the university’s Andrew F. Brimmer College of Business and Information Science. Bhuiyan assumed his position Wednesday. As a member of the cabinet, he will report directly to Rochon.

In his role as vice president for innovation and sustainable development, he will be responsible for implementing and managing initiatives of the Tuskegee University Foundation, as well as developing and directing the Tuskegee University Research Park; expanded off-campus research venues; Center for Research and Development Contracting and Sub-contracting; Center for Regional Sustainable Economic Development; a center for entrepreneurial leadership and a social business ventures facility.

The social business ventures facility will be a collaborative project with 2006 Nobel Peace Prize winner and founder of the Grameen Bank, Muhammad Yunus, who was the keynote speaker for this year’s spring commencement exercises at Tuskegee. The facility will serve as a national hub for innovative entrepreneurial ventures to solve social problems and create jobs.

Bhuiyan will also convene an exploratory committee to establish a branch of the Grameen Bank, a micro-loan lending institution, in Macon County, Alabama. Bhuiyan also works with Yunus to promote social business and microcredit concepts in the United States.

Before coming to Tuskegee University, Bhuiyan was director of the Center for Entrepreneurship at Fayetteville State University in North Carolina, where he was also an entrepreneurship professor.

A former American Council on Education Fellow, Bhuiyan is the founding national director of Opportunity Funding Cooperation’s innovation and entrepreneurship program and has helped more than 30 Historically Black Colleges and Universities to establish entrepreneurship programs during the last 12 years.

Bhuiyan also provides leadership to the annual National Policy Forum on Innovation, Entrepreneurship, and Higher Education Conference that involves university system heads, chancellors, presidents, Fortune 500 CEOs, and successful entrepreneurs and leaders.

He has worked as a marketing executive and consultant for British American Tobacco, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Pfizer, United Nations Development Program, and a number of other corporations. Bhuiyan served as an assistant dean, department head, faculty member, and teaching assistant at Hampton University in Virginia, University of Dhaka in Bangladesh, University of Florida, and Clark Atlanta, Fort Valley State, Savannah State universities in Georgia.

Bhuiyan's primary instruction and research interests are the areas of entrepreneurship, international business management, and leadership. He offers training programs on leadership development, negotiations and global business culture.

Bhuiyan has received several grants and led fundraising efforts for organizations that have collected millions of dollars. He has also served on several nonprofit, civic, and economic development boards of directors in Savannah, Ga. including: American Heart Association, American Red-Cross, Better Business Bureau, City of Savannah Human Resource Commission, Junior Achievement, Rotary Club, and Second Harvest Food Bank.

Bhuiyan has been named to Marquis’ Who’s Who in the World and Who’s Who in America. Bhuiyan and his work have been featured in daily national and local newspapers, and magazines including Atlanta Journal Constitution and Black Issues in Higher Education. Bhuiyan also hosted a biweekly live radio talk show, “International Business Hour,” for two years at Savannah State University’s WHCJ.

Bhuiyan received his Ph.D. from the University of Florida and two master’s degrees in business administration from Georgia State University and the Indian Institute of Management-Bangalore, India. He also received leadership and other education training from the Center for Creative Leadership in Greensboro, N.C., University of California at Berkley, Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government and Harvard Business School, Leadership Georgia, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Stanford University.