First Woman to Head State Bank of Pakistan

Shamshad Akhtar, an Asian Development Bank official, was named the first woman to run Pakistan’s central bank. Akhtar has an M.S. in economics from Quaid-e-Azam University in Islamabad, an M.A. in development economics from England’s University of Sussex and a Ph.D. in economics from Scotland’s Paisley College of Technology. She studied at Harvard University in 1987 under the Fulbright program. Akhtar is currently director general of the Southeast Asia department at the ADB. She joined the multilateral lender in 1990 and previously had been a World Bank economist in Islamabad. Akhtar will be the 14th governor of the central bank since its foundation in 1948.