Columbia University said in a statement on Wednesday that Nemat Shafik's selection brings an end to the search process that began after Lee C. Bollinger declared he would leave his position as president at the end of the 2022-2023 academic year.
5 Points On 20th President Of Columbia University
Ms. Shafik, an economist whose career has focused on public policy and academia, will become the twentieth president of Columbia University on July 1 and the first woman to hold the position in the university's 268-year history.
Ms. Shafik did her BA at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, her MSc at the London School of Economics and Political Science, and her DPhil at the University of Oxford.
Ms Shafik began her career at the World Bank, becoming its youngest-ever vice president at the age of 36. She later also served as deputy managing director of the International Monetary Fund and as a top official in the UK's Department for International Development.
Ms Shafik's appointment comes after other educational institutions have also recently appointed women to head top universities, including Harvard University, which last month named Claudine Gay as its new president. Gay became the first black woman to hold the top job at Harvard.
According to the London School of Economics, Nemat (Minouche) Shafik 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, and the Economy Honours Committee.
