Chairperson
Dr. Shamshad Akhtar has had a broad-based development career in leading national and multilateral organizations spanning over 37 years. She served as the Governor of the State Bank of Pakistan from 2006 to 2009, Under Secretary General of the Economic and Social Commission of the Asia and Pacific (UNESCAP), Senior Special Advisor on Economics and Finance and Assistant Secretary General UN, the UN Secretary General’s G20 Sherpa and Vice President, Middle East and North Africa (MENA) at The World Bank. She was also Senior Special Advisor to the President of Asian Development Bank (ADB). In 2018, Dr. Shamshad Akhtar served as Federal Minister of Finance, revenue, economic affairs, statistics division, planning and development as well as industry and commerce areas in Pakistan’s caretaker government.Dr. Shamshad has advised various governments and the private sector in specific areas of development, governance, poverty, privatization, and public-private partnerships in numerous sectors. As Governor of the State Bank of Pakistan, she was nominated Asia’s Best Central Bank Governor by the Emerging Markets Group in 2006 and Bankers Trust in 2007. She was also amongst Asian Wall Street Journal’s top ten Women Business Leaders in 2008. Dr. Shamshad is a Chairperson of Karaadanz, a not-for-profit Company that focuses on fostering economic growth and creating jobs through financial inclusion of unbanked individuals and unserved enterprises, with a special focus on women and youth. She was a Post–Doctoral Fellow and U.S Full-bright Scholar at Department of Economics, Harvard University. The learned doctor is also a PhD Economics from University of Paisley, UK, Masters of Arts with Degree in Development Economics from the University of Sussex, UK and MSc (Economics) from the University of Islamabad and Bachelor of Arts (Economics) from the University of Punjab.