Ahmed's first position after graduation was as Executive Officer of the East Pakistan Council for Child Welfare in Dhaka.
During her nine years at Comilla, she was responsible for the organisation of village level training programs for women that included adult literacy; health education, sanitation, and nutrition; agricultural extension; creation of cooperatives to promote cottage crafts and other income generating activities.
Within this context of crisis Abdullah's experience, a Comilla Academy brought her to the forefront of the rehabilitation of fort after the war.
As the director, Abdullah was involved in the planning, organisation and execution of all training, production and marketing programs of the institute, and exercised administrative and financial supervision, as well.
[4] Rural women were consequently perceived by all levels of society as ignorant, superstitious and without much work except cooking, cleaning and childbearing.
In 1975, she attended the Population Planning Communications seminar at the East–West Center, Honolulu; the World Congress for International Women's Year in Berlin, and the International Seminar on Population Communication sponsored by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) in Colombo, Sri Lanka.
That same year, she also attended the seminar on Action Research on Women in Rural Development at the University of Sussex, England.
For the last three years she has worked as short term consultant to the U.N. Development Program and the U.N. Fund for Population Activities in Lanka, helping the Sri Lanka Mahila Samiti (women's institutes introduced by Dr. Mary H. Rutnam, 1958 Ramon Magsaysay Awardee for Public Service for "her gift of service to the Ceylonese people and example she has set by her full life of dedication as a private citizen the needs of others") develop a production-oriented women's program similar to the one she has developed in Bangladesh.