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Shaping Character, Inspiring Truth
Dr. Asghar Zaidi is the Rector of the Karachi School of Business & Leadership (KSBL). An Oxford-trained economist, he has spent nearly four decades in universities, government and international organisations, in Pakistan and across Britain, Europe and Asia. In 2021 the President of Pakistan awarded him the Tamgha-i-Imtiaz, one of the country’s highest civil honours, for his global research on population ageing and his leadership in higher education.
At KSBL, he leads the School’s mission of Developing Character-Driven Leadership, guided by the vision of its Founder and Chairman, Mr. Hussain Dawood: “Develop your character and good manners to become a true leader.” Having completed the Oxford Leadership and Character Programme in September 2026, he now runs an adapted version of it for KSBL’s faculty and staff, the people who shape students most closely.
Leading Pakistan’s universities
Dr. Zaidi studied mathematics, statistics and economics at Government College Lahore, and 35 years later returned to his alma mater as its Vice Chancellor (2019 to 2023). In those four years, GCU’s score in the HEC’s performance assessment rose from 28.98 to 75.49. The University opened 18 new departments, including AI, Education, Global Studies and Law. It made admissions merit-based through entrance tests and interviews, turned its budget deficit into a surplus, and built an endowment fund that grew to Rs 1.5 billion. He also served as Vice Chancellor of the University of the Punjab, one of the country’s largest universities, and of Baba Guru Nanak University, Nankana Sahib. Before joining KSBL, he was Provost of the University of Management and Technology (UMT), Lahore, where he set up new units for student success and for AI in teaching, and widened UMT’s international partnerships.
He earned his DPhil in Economics at Oxford under Sir Tony Atkinson, one of the world’s foremost economists of poverty and inequality, after degrees from Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad, and the Institute of Social Studies in The Hague. He was a Marie Curie Fellow of the European Commission at Oxford and a researcher at the London School of Economics, Erasmus University Rotterdam and Tilburg University. In 1999 he was selected for a funded place at Harvard University’s pension reform workshop, run with the World Bank Institute for policymakers and experts from around the world. He went on to serve as Economic Advisor in the UK Government’s Department for Work and Pensions; Senior Economist at the OECD in Paris; Director of Research at the UN-affiliated European Centre in Vienna; Professor of International Social Policy at the University of Southampton; Professor of Social Gerontology at Seoul National University; and Professor of Public Policy at UMT, Lahore.
Dr. Zaidi is widely regarded as an authority on population ageing. From 2012 to 2018 he led the Active Ageing Index for the European Commission and the UN Economic Commission for Europe.
The Index shows how well countries help older people stay active, healthy and independent, and has since been used across Europe and Asia. He built similar measures for the UN in Asia and the Pacific, for HelpAge International and for Age UK, and has advised UNDP, UNFPA, the World Bank and the European Commission.
For his work in Pakistan, he began as a Staff Economist at the Pakistan Institute of Development Economics, later advised the Federal Bureau of Statistics on measuring poverty, led studies on dementia and on the rights of older people in Pakistan with HelpAge International and the British Council, and wrote the 2025 national report on ageing in Pakistan. In early 2026, he drafted a report for the Punjab Government on a multidimensional child poverty index, with technical guidance from UNICEF.
He has published five books, 52 peer-reviewed journal articles and 25 book chapters, including in volumes from Cambridge and Oxford University Presses, and more than 30 reports for UN agencies, the European Commission and governments. He also writes for the World Economic Forum, The Conversation and Times Higher Education, and regularly for The Express Tribune and The News, where his recent articles argue that Pakistan’s universities should form character by design.
He is an Associate Professorial Fellow at the University of Oxford’s Institute of Population Ageing, a member of the World Health Organization’s Technical Advisory Group for the UN Decade of Healthy Ageing, and Global Dean (Innovation) at the Kotler Business School, Canada. He is the Chief Patron of Door of Awareness, a Lahore charity providing free education and vocational training, and on the Executive Council of Alzheimer’s Pakistan.
Dr. Zaidi knows how Pakistan’s universities work, has seen how leading institutions abroad are run, and believes the country’s future leaders must be people of character as well as competence.