Zeti Akhtar Aziz

Ungku Zeti Akhtar binti Ungku Abdul Aziz (born 27 August 1947) is a Malaysian economist who served as the seventh governor of the Central Bank of Malaysia from 2000 to 2016, becoming the first woman to hold the position.

Zeti was born in Johor Bahru on 26 August 1947 to Ungku Abdul Aziz and Azah Aziz, studied economics at the University of Malaya (UM) before completing a Master's and PhD in monetary economics and international trade and finance at the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania. She began her career in 1979 as a research economist at the South East Asian Central Banks Research and Training Centre before joining the Central Bank of Malaysia in 1985, where she later rose to become the institution's seventh governor and the first woman to hold the post in 2000.

During her 16-year tenure, she oversaw key initiatives in Islamic finance, financial sector reforms, and regional cooperation, including chairing committees at the Bank for International Settlements and contributing to the establishment of the Islamic Financial Services Board, the International Islamic Liquidity Management Corporation, and the Asia School of Business. She stepped down in April 2016 as the second longest-serving governor in the bank's history. Afterward, she was appointed to the Council of Eminent Persons in 2018 and later became group chairman of Permodalan Nasional Berhad and chairman of Sime Darby Property until her retirement in 2021. In the years following, she was linked to investigations surrounding 1MDB but denied allegations of wrongdoing and continued to provide testimony in related court proceedings through 2023. She has received multiple international honours for her leadership, including lifetime achievement awards and The Royal Award for Islamic Finance.