Join us for this special event at which LSE President and Vice Chancellor Minouche Shafik will be in conversation with Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Director-General of the World Trade Organization.

Meet our speaker and chair

Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala (@NOIweala) is the Director-General of the World Trade Organization (WTO), the first woman and first African to hold the position in the 75-year history of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade and the WTO.

Dr Okonjo-Iweala is an economist and international development expert with more than 40 years of experience, whose service includes Chair of the Board of Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance (2016–2020), the African Union's African Risk Capacity Group (2014–2020), and Co-Chair of the Global Commission on the Economy and Climate. She was a member of the Board of Trustees of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and the Rockefeller Foundation. She co-chaired the G20 High Level Independent Panel on Financing for Pandemic Preparedness and was one of the founders of the COVAX Facility, designed to get affordable vaccines to Low and Low Middle-Income Countries. She currently serves on the Board of Trustees of the World Economic Forum and is co-chair of the Global Commission on the Economics of Water. She is a member of the G30 Group of top 30 people in International Finance. Dr Okonjo-Iweala holds the distinction of being the first woman to serve as Nigeria’s Finance Minister, a post she held for seven years. She also served briefly as the first female Foreign Affairs Minister. As Finance Minister, she implemented policy and institutional reforms to help fight corruption and she spearheaded the complete write-off by the Paris Club of $30 billion of Nigeria’s debt. She spent a 25-year career at the World Bank, rising to the number two position of Managing Director, Operations.

Minouche Shafik is President and Vice Chancellor of the London School of Economics and Political Science. She was previously a senior leader of the Bank of England, the International Monetary Fund, and the World Bank. She is an alumna of LSE. Her new book, What We Owe Each Other: A New Social Contract, is out now.

Twitter Hashtag for this event: #LSENgozi

Podcast & Video

A podcast of this event is available to download from In Conversation with Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala.

A video of this event is available to watch at In Conversation with Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala.

Podcasts and videos of many LSE events can be found at the LSE Public Lectures and Events: podcasts and videos channel.