Rizwan did his two-year Masters in Public Administration from Harvard University and holds the rare distinction of having served as the chief executive of four state-owned organisations under the Government of Pakistan, the most by any individual in history at the federal level.

[1] He first came to the fore when he saved more than PKR 7 billion of the national exchequer through a sweeping anti-corruption drive and commodity financing operation during his tenure as Chairman of the Trading Corporation of Pakistan (TCP).

[5][6] He is a Certified Director from the Pakistan Institute of Corporate Governance and remained a Teaching Fellow for Financial Management at the Harvard Kennedy School.

[7] Rizwan is the son of Jamil Ahmed, the former twice-elected and longest-serving Mayor of Hyderabad; and is the son-in-law of former FSC Chief Justice Haziqul Khairi.

At the time of his retirement from active civil service, Rizwan Ahmed was one of the country's senior-most federal secretaries and was also serving as Member of the Central Selection Board.