Minouche Shafik

Member

House of Lords

MINOUCHE SHAFIK is an economist, policymaker, central banker and higher education leader who has spent over three decades in leadership roles across a range of prominent international financial institutions, national governments and academic institutions. She started her career at the World Bank where she became the youngest-ever vice president of the World Bank at the age of 36. She transformed a $50 billion portfolio of infrastructure projects from the worst to the best performing at the World Bank, led private sector policy and investments, worked on the institution’s first-ever report on the environment, and advised governments in post-communist Eastern Europe. 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. 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. After 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 which sets interest rates, the Financial Policy Committee focusing on financial stability and the Board of the Prudential Regulatory Authority which supervises financial institutions. She also reformed the Bank of England’s risk management system and the real time gross settlements system for payments. She was president of the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) for six years where she drove academic excellence, improved student experience and raised substantial philanthropic support. She then served as President of Columbia University and has since led a review of international development for the UK government.

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.