Dr. Roomi Saeed Hayat is Chief Executive Officer Institute of Rural Management.

Dr. Roomi Saeed Hayat is one of the prominent Pakistanis associated with several development sector entities. He has 38 years of experience working in the Government and Non-Government sectors of Pakistan and his areas of expertise include rural development, women empowerment, environment and poverty reduction.

Similar to Dr. Sania Nishtar, Dr. Hayat is the founding Chairman of an international think tank Human Resource Development Network (HRDN) and also serve as the Vice Chairman of Akhtar Hameed Khan Resource Center (AHKRC). He is a member of the Board of Directors of the Rural Support Programmes Network (RSPN). He is Chairman of IUCN Pakistan.

Dr. Hayat specializes in livelihoods and poverty reduction with strong expertise in fostering Community Based Organizations, developing need based innovative livelihoods programmes, and formulating short cycle employable vocational and technical skills training. He has designed and conducted over 500 short- and long-term training programmes in more than 20 countries and has extensive multi-disciplinary experience of managing and executing donor funded projects including UNDP, ILO, USAID and World Bank with a special focus on livelihoods, rural development with gender as a cross cutting theme. 

Dr Hayat holds multiple degrees including a Master’s of Science in Mechanical Engineering from New Jersey Institute of Technology, USA and another Master degree in Rural Sociology from the NWFP University of Agriculture, Peshawar, Pakistan and doctorate of Anthropology from Quaid-e-Azam University, Islamabad, Pakistan. He is currently serving as Chief Executive Officer of Institute of Rural Management.

IRM is an ISO 9001:2015 certified entity and conducts up to 500 different types of training with an annual turnout of around 50,000 trainees. Over the last two decades, IRM has built the capacity of more than 1.1 million development professionals and communities across Pakistan.