Lady Syeda Sarwat Abed is the founder and director of the BRAC Institute of Languages (BIL), BRAC University since August 2005. She is also the designated in-charge official of the Residential Semester at Brac University's Savar campus.

Additionally, she has collaborated with Open University, UK for the completion of the Make Your Teaching Experience Count (MYTEC) Course. She has also been supervising various other initiatives such as the implementation of English in Schools which is a Robi-The Daily Star joint venture; administering the Pilot Phase of the mEducation Project to teach English through mobile telephones; coordinating the training of BRAC Primary School Teachers’ Training Programme, Medhabikash, and Skill Development Training for Advancing Resources (STAR) in collaboration with UNICEF and Brac; and the Education Management Training for Afghan Education Ministry Officials conducted in 2008 and 2009.

Sarwat Abed received her MA in English Literature from Dhaka University in 1978 and BA (Honours) in English Literature in 1974; she per took in short courses in Communicative Language Teaching and Teaching English as Foreign Language (TEFL) from Leeds University in 1979 and 1990 respectively as well as Early Childhood Development from Glasgow University in 1990.