Ms Shamshad Akhtar assumed the position of the director-general of the Asian Development Bank's (ADB) Southeast Asia Department in January 2004.
She is the first Pakistani woman to have risen to these ranks in the ADB. As the ADB director-general, she oversees the operations of the five divisions in the Southeast Asia Department operations co-ordination; infrastructure; agriculture, environment, and natural resources; social sectors; and governance, finance, and trade.
The Southeast Department covers Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines and Singapore.
Ms. Akhtar has worked on Pakistan from 1980-1990, and was instrumental in developing a couple of the ADB financed structural adjustment programmes to support capital markets and trade and industry reforms for Pakistan.-PR