Nemat Shafik

Dame Nemat Shafik DBE
Deputy Governor of the Bank of England
Incumbent
Assumed office 1 August 2014
Personal details
Born	Nemat Talaat Shafik 1962 (age 53–54) Alexandria, Egypt
Nationality	UK/US Egyptian
Alma mater	American University in Cairo University of Massachusetts-Amherst London School of Economics St Antony's College, Oxford

Dame Nemat Talaat Shafik, DBE (Arabic: نعمت شفيق) also known as Minouche Shafik is the Deputy Governor of the Bank of England with responsibility for markets and banking and a Member of the Bank of England Monetary Policy Committee.^[1] She was the Deputy Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund, a position she held from 2011-14.^[2] She previously served as Permanent Secretary of the United Kingdom Department for International Development (DFID) beginning in March 2008. On 12 September 2016 it was announced that Shafik had been appointed as the next Director of the London School of Economics and was scheduled to take up the post as of 1 September 2017.

Born in 1962, she is an economist by training and has held a number of senior positions in international organisations. She has also spoken, taught and published extensively on globalisation, emerging markets and private investment, international development, the Middle East and Africa, and the environment.^[3]

Early life

Shafik was born in Alexandria, Egypt in 1962. Her family left Egypt in the 1960s, and she lived in the United States as a child, later returning to Egypt where she graduated from high school.^[4] After a year at the American University in Cairo, she went to the University of Massachusetts-Amherst where she completed a B.A. in economics and politics.

After two years of working on development issues in Egypt for the U.S. Agency for International Development office in Cairo, in 1986 she completed an MSc in Economics from the London School of Economics followed by a DPhil in Economics from St Antony's College, University of Oxford in 1989.

Although Shafik grew up in the United States and speaks in American English, she holds both US and UK nationality.^[5]

Career

Shafik joined the World Bank after Oxford and filled a variety of roles starting in the research department where she worked on global economic modelling and forecasting and then later on environmental issues. She moved to do macroeconomic work on Eastern Europe during the transition and in the Middle East where she published a number of books and articles on the region's economic future, the economics of peace, labour markets, regional integration, and gender issues.^[6]

Shafik became the youngest ever Vice President at the World Bank at the age of 36.^[7]

She initially went to the British Government's Department for International Development (DFID) on secondment as Director General for Country Programmes where she was responsible for all of DFID's overseas offices and financing across Africa, the Middle East, Asia, Latin America, and Eastern Europe. She was appointed as DFID's Permanent Secretary in 2008 where she managed a bilateral aid programme in over 100 countries, multilateral policies and financing for the United Nations, European Union and international financial institutions, and overall development policy and research – responsible for 2400 staff and a budget of £38 billion (about US$60 billion) for 2011–2014. During her tenure, DFID was described by the OECD independent peer review as "a recognised international leader in development".^[8]

In September 2016 Shafik was appointed as the 16th Director of the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), effective from 1 September 2017.^[9]

Academic work

Shafik has held academic appointments at the Wharton Business School of the University of Pennsylvania and the Economics Department at Georgetown University. She has authored, edited, and co-authored a number of books, including Prospects for the Middle East and North African Economies: from Boom to Bust and Back? and Challenges Facing Middle Eastern and North African Countries: Alternative Futures, and Reviving Private Investment in Developing Countries. She has written articles for a number of publications, including Oxford Economic Papers, Colombia Journal of World Business, The Middle East Journal, Journal of African Finance and Economic Development, World Development, and the Journal of Development Economics. She contributes to a blog with other heads of development agencies at Ideas4development.org.^[10]

Boards and charitable activities

Dame Nemat Shafik currently serves on a number of boards including the Middle East Advisory Group to the International Monetary Fund,^[11] and the Economic Research Forum for the Arab World, Iran and Turkey.^[12] She is also active on the board and as a mentor to the Minority Ethnic Talent Association which supports under-represented groups to advance to senior positions in the civil service.^[13]

She has chaired several international consultative groups including: the Consultative Group to Assist the Poor, the Energy Sector Management Assistance Programme,^[14] the Global Water and Sanitation Program,^[15] Cities Alliance,^[16] InfoDev,^[17] the Public-Private Infrastructure Advisory Facility,^[18] and the Global Corporate Governance Forum.^[19] She was instrumental in launching the Africa Infrastructure Consortium.^[20]

Awards

In 2009, she was named "GG2 Woman of the Year" at the 11th Annual GG2 Leadership & Diversity Awards, run by the Asian Media and Marketing Group.^[21] Shafik was made a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the June 2015 Queen's Birthday Honours.^[22]

Personal

She has twin children with her second husband, Raffael Jovine, and three stepchildren.^[23] She speaks English and Arabic.

References

Sources

• "New top civil servant for DFID". DFID.gov.uk. 9 June 2011. Archived from the original on 12 June 2011. Retrieved 6 January 2012. 

The Bank of England's Monetary Policy Committee
	Governor: Mark Carney (July 2013 – present)
	August 2014 – August 2015:	Carney | Broadbent | Cunliffe | Haldane | Shafik | Miles | McCafferty | Weale | Forbes
	September 2015 – July 2016:	Carney | Broadbent | Cunliffe | Haldane | Shafik | McCafferty | Weale | Forbes | Vlieghe
	August 2016 – present:	Carney | Broadbent | Cunliffe | Haldane | Shafik | McCafferty | Forbes | Vlieghe | Saunders