Dame Minouche Shafik

Minouche Shafik is an economist, policymaker, and higher education leader who has spent over three decades in leadership roles across a range of prominent international, national and academic institutions. She is currently chairing a major review of international development for the UK government. Previously, she was president of Columbia University and of the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) where she drove academic excellence, improved student experience and raised substantial philanthropic support. 

Before that, Minouche Shafik served as deputy governor of the Bank of England, where she led work on fighting misconduct in financial markets and managed the central bank’s balance sheet of around $600 billion. She served on all the Bank’s policy committees which included the Monetary Policy Committee, the Financial Policy Committee and the Board of the Prudential Regulatory Authority. As Deputy Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund, she navigated the turbulence surrounding the European debt crisis and the Arab Spring and modernised the approach to building economic policy capacity in member countries. She was also responsible for the IMF’s $1 billion administrative budget and $10 billion pension fund.

Minouche Shafik’s tenure as Permanent Secretary of the United Kingdom’s Department for International Development coincided with the department being ranked the best performing in government and helped secure the UK’s commitment to giving 0.7% of GDP to fight poverty in the poorest countries in the world. She was the youngest-ever vice president of the World Bank at the age of 36, where she worked on the institution’s first-ever report on the environment, led work on infrastructure and private sector investment, and advised governments in post-communist Eastern Europe. She led policy work and published books on the prospects for economic progress in the Middle East during the Oslo peace process.

Minouche Shafik received her BA from the University of Massachusetts Amherst, an MSc from LSE, and a DPhil from St Antony’s College, Oxford. She holds a life peerage and is a crossbench member of the House of Lords, received a damehood for services to the global economy, an honorary fellowship of the British Academy and of St. Antony’s College at Oxford University, and has six honorary doctorates. She currently serves as chair of the board of the Victoria and Albert Museum, a member of the board of the Gates Foundation, a distinguished Fellow of the Centre for Economic Policy Research, and a member of the Council of Foreign Relations and the Bretton Woods Committee. Her recently published book, What We Owe Each Other has been translated into twelve languages. She has served as deputy chair and a trustee of the British Museum, member of the supervisory board of Siemens, the Council of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, and a Governor of the National Institute for Economic and Social Research.