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 advanced academic excellence, improved student experience, and raised substantial philanthropic support.

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

Before joining the IMF, Minouche served as permanent secretary of the UK government’s Department for International Development (DFID). Her tenure there coincided with DFID being ranked the best-performing department in government, and she helped secure the UK’s commitment to giving 0.7% of GDP to fight poverty in the world’s poorest countries.

At age 36, Minouche became the youngest-ever vice president of the World Bank, 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.

Minouche received a B.A. from the University of Massachusetts Amherst, an M.Sc. from LSE, and a D.Phil. from St Antony’s College at Oxford University. 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, and has six honorary doctorates. Her most recent book, What We Owe Each Other: A New Social Contract for a Better Society, has been translated into 12 languages. She has served as deputy chair and a trustee of the British Museum, the Council of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, and a governor of the National Institute of Economic and Social Research. She has been a member of the board of the Gates Foundation since 2022.