Minouche Shafik

Chief Economic Advisor to the Prime Minister

United Kingdom

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 currently serves as Chief Economic Advisor to the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and chair of the Victoria and Albert Museum.

She started her career at the World Bank where she became the youngest-ever vice president at the age of 36, turned around a $50 billion portfolio of infrastructure projects, 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, led training of thousands of policy makers around the world, and was responsible for the IMF’s $1 billion administrative budget and $10 billion pension fund.

As deputy governor of the Bank of England, she served on all the Bank’s policy committees, led work on fighting misconduct in financial markets and managed the central bank’s balance sheet of around $600 billion. Minouche Shafik was an academic leader for seven years serving as president of the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) and Columbia University where she was the first woman to lead both institutions. Her focus was on driving academic excellence, improving student experience and raising substantial philanthropic support. 

She holds a life peerage and is a crossbench member of the House of Lords, received a knighthood for services to the global economy, an honorary fellowship of the British Academy and of St. Antony’s College at Oxford University, has six honorary doctorates, and published numerous books and articles.