How the Jameel Family Turned Philanthropy Into a Science

When Mohammed Abdul Latif Jameel met a small group of economists at MIT who were running experiments to measure which anti-poverty programs actually worked, he asked them one question before committing support: how many lives could they reach in 10 years?

The economists — Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo — answered with a number that was, by any measure, audacious. They said 100 million people. Mohammed Jameel backed them immediately. What became the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab, known as J-PAL, has since touched more than 600 million lives across 80 countries. Banerjee and Duflo went on to win the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics in 2019.

Hassan Jameel, vice chairman of Abdul Latif Jameel in Saudi Arabia and also vice chairman of Community Jameel, spoke about the partnership at J-PAL’s 20th anniversary celebration at MIT. He credited his father’s clarity of purpose and his willingness to back a vision before the scale of its impact was knowable.

“Sometimes when we look back and see the Nobel Prize, seven offices around the world, hundreds of staff, affiliated professors, 600 million lives touched, it can be tempting to think that this was always going to turn out this way,” Hassan Jameel said. “But the courage and the vision of that small group of people, and a lot of hard work by J-PAL’s staff, partners and affiliates, are truly the bedrock of these towering achievements.”

Community Jameel’s work with MIT spans multiple institutions and research areas. The Abdul Latif Jameel clinic applies machine learning to health challenges, representing a newer strand of the family’s commitment to using scientific tools to address urgent problems.

J-PAL’s method is built on randomized evaluations — essentially controlled experiments run in real-world conditions to test the effectiveness of development interventions. When governments or foundations want to reduce malaria deaths or improve school attendance, J-PAL can tell them which approach produces the best measurable result per dollar spent. The lab has worked with organizations including the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Nike Foundation.

Hassan Jameel has described the philanthropic approach as inseparable from the broader ALJ identity, not a separate branch of the business but a reflection of the same philosophy his grandfather modeled. The founder had no formal education but gave generously to communities around him regardless of the specific need.

Community Jameel’s research commitments extend to food and water innovation, where MIT-affiliated researchers have worked on solutions to global resource shortages — an area Hassan Jameel has described as one of the defining challenges of the coming decades.