Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala

Director General - WTO

Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala 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.  Dr Okonjo-Iweala 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 also a member of the G30 Group of top 30 people in International Finance and the council of the Prince of Wales’s initiative Earthshot Prize.

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 in two terms. She also served briefly as the first female Foreign Affairs Minister.

Dr Okonjo-Iweala holds a Bachelor’s in Economics Magna Cum Laude from Harvard University and a PhD in Regional Economics and Development from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).