Minouche Shafik
Baroness Minouche Shafik is the 20th and first female President of Columbia University in the City of New York. Shafik is a distinguished economist, policymaker, and higher education leader who has spent over three decades in senior leadership roles across a range of prominent international and academic institutions. Throughout her career, she has been at the center of efforts to address some of the world's most complex and disruptive challenges. Most recently, Shafik served as Director of the London School of Economics and Political Science. Before that, she was Deputy Governor of the Bank of England, where she sat on all the monetary, financial, and prudential policy committees and was responsible for a balance sheet of over £500 billion. Her past positions include the youngest-ever Vice President of the World Bank, Permanent Secretary of the UK Department for International Development, and Deputy Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund.
Minouche Shafik Professional Experience / Academic History
Professional Experience
-
President
-
Director
-
Deputy Governor of Markets and Banking
-
Deputy Managing Director
Academic History
-
Ph.D., Economics
-
M.S., Economics
-
B.A., Economics and Politics
Shafik began her career at the World Bank. By age 36, she had become the bank's youngest-ever Vice President.
She worked on the institution’s first-ever report on the environment and later advised governments in Eastern Europe after the fall of the Berlin Wall.
She also designed reform programs for transition countries in Eastern Europe, and developed proposals for economic integration in support of the Oslo peace process in the Middle East.
At the IMF during the 2009-2010 euro area debt crisis, she oversaw the fund's work on several countries at the epicenter of the upheaval.
During the Arab Spring pro-democracy protests of the early 2010s, she ran the IMF’s programs in the Middle East.
She also oversaw the IMF’s university which trains thousands of government officials each year, and was responsible for human resources and an administrative budget of $1 billion.
OTHER PREVIOUS APPOINTMENTS
In 2008, she was appointed Permanent Secretary of the U.K.’s Department for International Development, where she led an overhaul in British foreign aid.
She helped secure the UK’s commitment to giving 0.7% of GDP in aid and focused on fighting poverty in the poorest countries in the world.
At the Bank of England, she led work on fighting misconduct in financial markets and was responsible for the contingency planning around the Brexit referendum.
ACADEMIA
During the early 2000s, she held academic appointments at the Wharton Business School of the University of Pennsylvania and the Economics Department at Georgetown University.
She was awarded Honorary Doctorates from the University of Warwick, the University of Reading, the University of Glasgow, and the American University in Beirut.
RECOGNITION
2020 House of Lords Cross-Bench Peer
2018 100 Most Influential Africans
2015 Dame Commander by Queen Elizabeth II
2015 100 Women in Finance European Industry Leader
2009 Women of the Year, Global Leadership and Global Diversity
MEDIA & PUBLICATIONS
Shafik has been profiled and featured in The New York Times, Forbes, Bloomberg, and The Wall Street Journal.
She has been featured in The Guardian, Financial Times, New York Post, Fox Business, and Time Magazine, among others.
Recently, she has been criticized in numerous financial media outlets and publications over her congressional testimony and her handling of pro-Palestinian protests on campus.