Ajmal Ahmady
Ajmal Ahmady is a global leader whose career spans senior policy roles, asset management, economic development, fintech, and academia. He is now a Senior Fellow at Harvard, where he is conducting research related to central banking in emerging and frontier markets.
He has been interviewed by CNN’s Julia Chatterly and Eurasia Group’s Ian Bremmer, shared the stage with Tony Blair, and spoken at a forum with General Petraeus.
He previously served as the Governor of the Central Bank of Afghanistan, Minister of Industry and Commerce, & Senior Economic Advisor to the President of Afghanistan.
More broadly, he has been a speaker at numerous events (Harvard, Bloomberg New Economy Forum, IMF, United Nations, & various Think Tanks), been interviewed on CNN, BBC, and other media outlets, published op-eds in the FT, Bloomberg, Foreign Affairs, The Hill, and has been cited in numerous media outlets and podcasts. He can be followed on Twitter at @aahmady.
As Afghanistan’s central bank governor, he was responsible for the formulation and implementation of monetary policy, financial sector supervision, financial intelligence, and payment systems development. Under challenging circumstances, he kept inflation at only 2% and implemented RTGS and mobile payment systems.
As Minister of Industry & Commerce, he developed the national trade & transit strategy, led industrial park and policies development, improved the business environment, and improved economic ties with neighboring countries.
As Economic Advisor, he was responsible for formulating economic policies, strategic economic projects, and policy coordination. He led legal and operational reforms that led to Afghanistan earning the top reformer of the year in the World Bank Doing Business Indicator report in 2018, launched and managed a $150 million national air corridor export strategy, & was on the board of the TAPI natural gas pipeline project.
His previous career was in asset management, where he worked for the largest asset managers in the world as an economist and portfolio manager. He has experience evaluating and investing in both developed & emerging market countries – including bonds, corporate, rates, & currencies.
He also spent a few years in economic development – auditing Microfinance institutions in Cameroon, reforming a water utility in Kabul, and advising the Minister of Finance in Afghanistan. Finally, he also has experience at several Fintech firms.
During graduate school, he spent summers at the U.S. Treasury Department, Booz Allen Hamilton, & at a frontier market private equity firm.