Baroness Nemat Minouche Shafik

DBE

Baroness Minouche Shafik DBE, HonFBA (DPhil Economics, 1989) is currently the Director of the London School of Economics, and President-elect at Columbia University in the City of New York.

Baroness Shafik was born in Alexandria, Egypt. When she was four years old, her family fled the country during President Gamal Abdel Nasser’s nationalisation program. Her father, a scientist, found work in the United States, where he had done his PhD, and Shafik attended numerous schools in Florida, Georgia, and North Carolina. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in economics and politics from the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, where she graduated summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa. She also holds a Master of Science in economics from the LSE, and a Doctor of Philosophy in economics from St Antony’s College, Oxford University.

Shafik began her career at the World Bank, becoming the bank’s youngest-ever vice president at the age of 36. She later served as Permanent Secretary of the UK’s Department for International Development, where she led an overhaul in British foreign aid, and as Deputy Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund during the European debt crisis. As Deputy Governor of the Bank of England, where she sat on all monetary, financial, and prudential policy committees and was responsible for a balance sheet of more than £500b.