Bio

Ayesha is a development economist working with the Pakistan Poverty Alleviation Fund in Islamabad on rural household income analysis. She graduated from LUMS with a distinction in Economics and won a competitive fellowship to complete a master's at the University of Edinburgh. She returned to Pakistan on purpose her thesis was on agricultural income diversification in southern Punjab and she wanted to do the policy work that came after the research, not just write about it from abroad. She is from Narowal originally, comes from a conservative but educated family, and wears hijab by choice rather than family pressure. She is intensely analytical about almost everything once, apparently, she built a spreadsheet to evaluate holiday routes — but she is also warm, prone to laughing at herself, and genuinely interested in people. She is learning to cook properly (with moderate success), runs 5km three times a week, and is re-reading the complete works of Intizar Husain.