Nemat (Minouche) Shafik is a leading economist, whose career has straddled public policy
and academia. She was appointed Director of the London School of Economics and Political
Science in September 2017.
She did her BA at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, her MSc at the LSE and her
DPhil at the University of Oxford and, by the age of 36, had become the youngest ever Vice
President of the World Bank. She taught at Georgetown University and the Wharton
Business School. She later served as the Permanent Secretary of the Department for
International Development, Deputy Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund,
and as Deputy Governor of the Bank of England from 2014-2017, where she sat on the
monetary, financial and prudential policy committees and was responsible for the Bank’s
balance sheet of over £500 billion.
Minouche has served on and chaired numerous boards and currently serves as a Trustee of
the British Museum, the Supervisory Board of Siemens, the Council of the Institute for Fiscal
Studies. She was made a Dame Commander of the British Empire in the Queen’s Birthday
Honours list in 2015 and became a cross-bench peer in the House of Lords in 2020.
Muriel Gray graduated from Glasgow School of Art, working first as an illustrator and then as assistant head of design at the National Museum of antiquities in Edinburgh.
Presenting Channel 4’s live seminal music programme The Tube led to long career in broadcasting, and to the joint founding of a television production company that grew into one of the leading UK independents.
Her writing career began with the best-selling horror novel The Trickster, followed by two more, Furnace and The Ancient, which Stephen King described as ‘scary and unputdownable’.
In addition to having been an opinion writer in a huge variety of newspapers and publications she has published three nonfiction books, many short stories in anthologies, written for TV, radio, cinema, comics and live theatre and was the chair of the judges for the Women’s Prize for Literature.
Muriel was the first woman rector of Edinburgh University, has been awarded two honorary decorates, from Abertay University and Glasgow School of Art validated by Glasgow University. She is currently the chair of the board of governors at The Glasgow School of Art, also the first woman to hold this office.
These roles are not remunerated. These reappointments have been made in accordance with the Cabinet Office’s Governance Code on Public Appointments, the process is regulated by the Commissioner for Public Appointments. The Government’s Governance Code requires that any significant political activity undertaken by an appointee in the last five years is declared. This is defined as holding office, public speaking, making a recordable donation or candidature for election. Baroness Minouche and Ms Gray have not declared any activity.
