Biography

Rishi Sunak: Biography, Age, Family, Education, Career, and More

Published

2 years ago

2022/10/24

British Politician, Rishi Sunak, is set to become the next Prime Minister (PM) of the United Kingdom (UK) following the resignation of Liz Truss.

Liz Truss served as the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom for 45 days.

If he eventually becomes the Prime Minister, which is very likely, Sunak, will be the first person with Indian origin to hold the position.

He would also be the youngest since 1812.

Who is Rishi Sunak?

Rishi Sunak was born on May 12, 1980, in Southampton to parents of Punjabi Indian descent who migrated to Britain from East Africa in the 1960s.

Parents and grandparents

His parents’ names are Yashvir and Usha Sunak.

His father was born and raised in Kenya, while his mother was born in Tanzania.

His grandfathers were born in Punjab province, British India, and migrated from East Africa with their families to the UK in the 1960s.

His paternal grandfather, Ramdas Sunak, was from Pakistan and moved to Nairobi in 1935 to work as a clerk, where he was joined by his wife Suhag Rani Sunak from Delhi in 1937.

His maternal grandfather, Raghubir Sain Berry MBE, worked in Tanganyika as a tax official, and had an arranged marriage with 16-year-old Tanganyika-born Sraksha, with whom he had three children, and the family moved to the UK in 1966, funded by Sraksha selling her wedding jewellery.

In Britain, Raghubir Berry joined the Inland Revenue, and as a collector, was appointed a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in the 1988 Birthday Honours list.[20] Yashvir was a general practitioner, and Usha was a pharmacist, who ran a local pharmacy.

Siblings

He is the eldest of three siblings.

Sunak’s brother Sanjay is a psychologist. His sister Raakhi is the Chief of Strategy and Planning at Education Cannot Wait, the United Nations global fund for education.

Age

Going by his date of birth, Sunak is 42 years old as at 2022.

Education

Sunak attended Stroud School, a preparatory school in Romsey, Hampshire, and Winchester College, a boys’ independent boarding school, where he was head boy.

Young Sunak was educated at Winchester College. His tertiary education was at Lincoln College, Oxford where he studied philosophy, politics and economics (PPE) and graduated in 2001.

During his time at the university, he undertook an internship at Conservative Campaign Headquarters.

He later obtained an MBA from Stanford University in California as a Fulbright Scholar.

Religion

Sunak is a Hindu. He took his oath as an MP at the House of Commons on the Bhagavad Gita.

Family

Sunak met his wife, Akshata Murthy, while studying at Stanford.

Akshata is the daughter of N. R. Narayana Murthy, an Indian billionaire businessman who founded Infosys.

Murty is a director of her father’s investment firm, Catamaran Ventures.

They got married in August 2009.

The couple has two daughters.

Non-political career

Sunak was a waiter at a curry house in Southampton during his summer holidays.

After graduating, Sunak worked as an analyst for the investment bank, Goldman Sachs between 2001 and 2004.

He moved on to join Children’s Investment Fund Management, where he became partner in 2006. Sunak left the company in 2009 join former colleagues in California at a new hedge fund firm, Theleme Partners, which launched in October 2010 with $700 million under management.

He was also a director of the investment firm Catamaran Ventures, owned by his father-in-law, the Indian businessman N. R. Narayana Murthy, between 2013 and 2015.

Political career

He became the Leader of the UK Conservative Party on 24 October 2022; a position which qualifies him to become the United Kingdom Prime Minister.

Prior to this position, he was Chancellor of the Exchequer from 2020 to 2022 and Chief Secretary to the Treasury from 2019 to 2020.

Rishi has been a Member of Parliament (MP) for Richmond (Yorks) since 2015.

Sunak was elected to the House of Commons for Richmond in North Yorkshire at the 2015 general election, succeeding William Hague.

He was appointed to Theresa May’s second government as Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Local Government in the 2018 reshuffle.

Former UK PM, Boris Johnson after he was elected and appointed Prime Minister, appointed Sunak as Chief Secretary to the Treasury on 24 July 2019.

He became a member of the Privy Council the next day.

The Privy Council (PC), officially His Majesty’s Most Honourable Privy Council, is a formal body of advisers to the Sovereign of the United Kingdom. Its membership mainly comprises senior politicians who are current or former members of either the House of Commons or the House of Lords.

Sunak later replaced Sajid Javid as Chancellor of the Exchequer after his resignation in the February 2020 cabinet reshuffle. He was 39 years old at the time, making him the fourth youngest person ever to hold that position.

He resigned as chancellor on 5 July 2022, citing his economic policy differences with Johnson in his resignation letter.

Sunak’s resignation, along with the resignation of Javid as Health Secretary, led to Johnson’s resignation amid a government crisis.

In July 2022, he stood in the Conservative party leadership election to replace Johnson, and lost the members’ vote to Liz Truss.

Following Truss’s resignation amid a government crisis, Sunak won the October 2022 Conservative Party leadership election.

Controversy

Infosys continued to operate in Russia following Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, which led to criticism of Sunak and his family, but in April Infosys closed its Russian office.