Keynote Speakers

Abid Qaiyum Suleri, PhD

Executive Director,
Sustainable Development Policy Institute

Dr. Abid Qaiyum Suleri is Executive Director at Pakistan's premier independent policy think tank, Sustainable Development Policy Institute. He serves on different policy-making forums and advisory boards, including the National Advisory Council of the Planning Commission of Pakistan and the Pakistan Climate Change Council. He is a member of the Board of Directors of the National Disaster Risk Management Fund and also a Member of Government of Punjab's Vice Chancellors' Search Committee for Agricultural Universities. Some of the international policy-making forums where Dr. Suleri is currently serving are: Advisory Board of CAREC (Central Asia Regional Economic Cooperation) Think-Tank Network, Member of the Permanent Organizing Committee of South Asia Economic Summit, and Co-Chair of Board of Climate Action Network South Asia.

Earlier, he served as a member of the Prime Minister's Economic Advisory Council, Convenor of the National Coordination Committee on Prime Minister's Agriculture Transformation Plan, and a member of the Finance Minister's Macro-Economic Policy Group. He also served as a member of the Board of Management of Pakistan's national oil marketing company, Pakistan State Oil (PSO), where he chaired the Board's Audit and Accounts Committee. He also served on three judicial commissions (formed by the Supreme Court of Pakistan, Islamabad High Court, and Lahore High Court) on environmental issues.

Dr. Suleri has represented Pakistan in various official and civil society delegations, including the UNFCCC Conference of Parties (COPs), and WTO Ministerial Conferences. His current research interests include sustainable development, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, food security, regional trade, and the political economy of development.

He is an acclaimed writer and also the Editor-in-Chief of the SDPI peer-reviewed journal, "Journal of Development Policy, Research, and Practice". Dr Suleri earned his PhD in food security from the University of Greenwich, UK.

Kristóf Lehmann, PhD

Director for International Monetary Policy Analysis and Training of Economic Sciences, Magyar Nemzeti Bank (Central Bank of Hungary);
Head of Institute, MNB Knowledge Centre, Centre for Sustainable Finance (MNB Institute), John von Neumann University

Kristóf Lehmann has been the Head of the Directorate for International Monetary Policy Analysis and Training of Economic Sciences at the Magyar Nemzeti Bank (Central Bank of Hungary - MNB) since 2019. His responsibilities include the representation of MNB in the International Relations Committee of the European Central Bank, along with different educational and research projects mostly as the leader of the MNB Tudásközpont - MNB Intézet, a university Department first active at the Corvinus University of Budapest (2017-2021), then at Neumann János University (since autumn of 2021).

He graduated at the Corvinus University of Budapest, Faculty of Economic Sciences, with a specialization in European Integration and World Economic Adaptation. He completed his PhD in 2014 at the Multidisciplinary Doctoral School of International Relations of the Corvinus University of Budapest. Mr. Lehmann earned an MBA from the Maastricht School of Management in 2020.

He started his career at the Hungarian Development Bank (Magyar Fejlesztési Bank) in 2006. From 2008, he worked as an emerging market economic analyst for German DZ Bank (from Takarekbank Budapest). Between 2010-2011, he was a researcher at Waseda University in Japan on a doctoral scholarship. He joined the Central Bank of Hungary in 2011. From 2014 until his current position, he was the head of the Monetary Strategy Department.

His blog publications on macroeconomy are available online: https://economaniablog.hu/author/lehmannkristof/