Datuk (Dr) Zainal Aznam has long been involved in various economic research and policy development groups in the country. He was the former Deputy Director-General of the Institute of Strategic and International Studies (ISIS), Deputy Director of Malaysian Institute of Economic Research (MIER) and Advisor in Economics at Bank Negara Malaysia. He has also spent nearly 20 years in the Economic Planning Unit (EPU) of the Prime Minister’s Department. He was a member of the Working Group of the National Economic Action Council (NEAC), and currently is an Adviser with the National Implementation Task Force (NITF).

Datuk (Dr) Zainal Aznam is active in the academic field. He has served on boards and teams at Harvard University, Keio University and Korea Institute for International Economic Policy. He was a Visiting Scholar at the Harvard Institute for International Development (HIID), Harvard University. He was also a Research Fellow at the Centre for Research in Inequality Security and Ethnicity (CRISE), Queen Elizabeth House, Oxford University, United Kingdom from May to June 2004. Currently, he sits on the advisory panels of Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia and University of Malaya, and is an Adjunct Professor at Universiti Utara Malaysia.

Datuk (Dr) Zainal Aznam has a Bachelor of Science degree in Economics from Queen’s University, Northern Ireland, a Masters degree in Development Economics from University of Leicester and a Doctorate in Economics from Oxford University, United Kingdom.

Datuk (Dr) Zainal Aznam’s current directorships include HSBC Bank Malaysia Berhad, Opus International Group PLC, Rating Agency Malaysia Berhad and Permodalan BSN Berhad. He was a Commisioner in the Securities Commission from 1999 to 2004.