https://www.cnbc.com/2023/01/18/columbia-university-names-nemat-shafik-first-woman-president.html
Born in Alexandria, Egypt, Shafik and her family immigrated to the U.S. after losing everything in the “political upheaval of the 1960s,” Shafik says in an introductory video for the Columbia community.
“We moved to Savannah, Georgia when I was just 4 years old. I attended lots of schools as we moved around the American south. I also at that time discovered local libraries,” she shares. “I love to read and that was my path for discovering the world. My father always said to me, ‘they can take everything away from you except for your education.’”
Shafik’s father, an environmental scientist and professor, and mother, a teacher and head of a school, instilled the value of education in her very early on. This played a role in her love for learning, as she went on to receive a BA at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, her master of science at LSE, and her Ph.D. at the University of Oxford.
By age 36, Shafik had become the youngest-ever vice president of the World Bank in the 1990s. She also taught at Georgetown University and the Wharton Business School.
