Yesterday was as truly as monumental as it gets. The American University in Egypt hosted the annual Nadia Younes Memorial Lecture featuring Dame Minouche Shafik, director of the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). She was the first woman in the history to hold this position. It didn’t stop there, she also discussed global finance, development economics and academia at the lecture.
Dame Minouche mentioned the importance of obligations and opportunities due to their heavy impacts on our society. Inspirationally, she managed to share with the audience the lessons and stories she learned, in order to shed light on the importance of education, in guaranteeing social mobility and the role of luck and effort in advancement. It is always a true honor to hear the words of a role model who built herself from the ground up. “When I was growing up he (her father) would always say to us they can take everything away from you, except your education. He consistently placed huge emphasis on us working hard and taking our education very seriously,” she added.
“We were immigrants when we went to the US and no doubt my family faced discrimination. But we were also allowed to get on and take advantage of the opportunities that were there,” she stated proudly.
She goes on to discuss the theme of luck versus effort, then followed by discussing leadership. She stressed that great leaders inspire, encourage, enable and build great leaders around them. She serves as a trustee of the British Museum, the council of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, the governor of the National Institute for Economic and Social Research, and is an honorary fellow of St. Antony’s College Oxford.
Shafik was made a Dame Commander of the British Empire in the Queen’s New Year’s Honors list in 2015 and holds honorary doctorates from the University of Warwick, the University of Reading, and Glasgow University.A woman of great presence, grace and prestige. Our society thanks her, and will forever look up to her great efforts and achievements with pride.
