GROWING up in Stoke-on-Trent, economist and diplomat Kumar Iyer did not imagine being in a national-level leadership and strategy role, in his own words.
Today, he is leads on international economic policy, including oversight of the UK’s sanctions regime against Russia to support war-torn Ukraine.
Iyer is director general (economics, science and technology) at the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO).
He has been in this position since its inception in June 2020 after the Department for International Development (DFID) and Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) were merged. Both were brought together to unite development and diplomacy under one umbrella and bring the UK’s international efforts on one platform. The FCDO employs around 17,300 staff in its diplomatic and development offices worldwide, including in 280 overseas embassies and high commissions.
Iyer’ responsibility is to deliver the UK’s foreign policy leadership and co-ordination across economics, science and technology.
He also overlooks development policy and trade, ensuring economic security in addition to looking at the FCDO’s research, analysis, special projects, economics and evaluation capabilities.
As a board member, Iyer also ensures the department meets international policy priorities, public service agreements targets and service delivery targets set by ministers.
Previously, Iyer was director general in the prime minister’s Covid-19 Taskforce and the chief economist at the then FCO (Foreign and Commonwealth Office) from 2019 to 2020.
Iyer’s appointment as the FCO’s chief economist made him first ethnic minority FCO board member.
He led the FCO's economics unit, providing in-house economic analysis input into foreign policy formulation, and also developing economics capability within the FCO through the economics and prosperity faculty of the Diplomatic Academy.
Iyer was born in London. After spending a few formative years in India, his family moved back to the UK when he was 11 and settled in Stoke-on-Trent.
“I think living abroad during my early childhood gave me a sense of the world as a bigger place and I developed an interest in international issues that has always stayed with me,” he said in 2019.
Iyer has an MPhil in Economics from Cambridge University, where he was a Bank of England scholar and an undergraduate tutor in microeconomics.
Earlier in his career, Iyer taught international finance and macroeconomics at Harvard University, where he was a Kennedy Scholar.
He went on to conduct his post-graduate studies at Cambridge University and was a visiting academic at Oxford University as well.
Leaving academia for consultancy in 2007, Iyer started working with Boston Consulting Group where he worked mainly in the financial services practice, but also for large multinational media and retail clients.
He joined the prime minister's Strategy Unit as a deputy director at the height of the global financial crisis in 2008, during Gordon Brown's time at Downing Stret.
Two years later, he was transferred to the Treasury as the deputy director for strategy, planning and budget, and then as the head of financial sector interventions, where his team was responsible for overall strategy and coordinated the budget.
In 2013, Iyer was appointed as the British Deputy High Commissioner for western India and as director general for UK Trade and Investment (UKTI) for all of India, a new top-level post, which was created to reflect the increasing importance of UK-India business ties.
In his former role in India, Iyer was responsible for all aspects of diplomatic engagement in western states of India - Maharashtra, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh and Goa.
As director general India of the UKTI, he overlooked UK-India commercial and trade relationship.
“I am very excited at the prospect of living and working in India; it’s a country of boundless energy, talent and potential. Having lived and studied in India whilst growing up, I am equally keen to play my part in promoting the academic, cultural and social links between our two countries,” Iyer said at the time of this appointment, adding that he was looking forward to giving his children some exposure to their Indian heritage.
He grew up speaking Hindi and Tamil, languages that became useful when he was posted to India in 2013.
After leaving his post of British Deputy High Commissioner in India, Iyer worked as a "visiting academic" at Hertford College, Oxford, and as a senior partner in Oliver Wyman before he was picked as the FCO’s chief economist.
Iyer is a keen cricketer and chess player. He is married to Kathryn, a barrister practicing criminal law. They have two children, a son and a daughter.
