Arif Alvi

Arif Alvi was born on 29 July 1949. His father, Habib-ur-Rehman Elahi Alvi, was also a dentist, in Lucknow, British India who migrated to Karachi after the establishment of Pakistan, and opened a dental clinic in Saddar Town. His father became politically affiliated with Jamaat-e-Islami Pakistan. According to the PTI website, Alvi's father was a dentist of Jawaharlal Nehru. After his father started a campaign against compulsory catechism, Alvi was then expelled from the Anglican Karachi Grammar School. He completed his early education in Karachi, and moved to Lahore in 1967 for education in dentistry. Alvi received a Bachelor of Dental Surgery degree from De'Montmorency College of Dentistry. He completed his master's degree in prosthodontics from the University of Michigan in 1975. Alvi received a master's degree in orthodontics in 1984 from the University of the Pacific in San Francisco, California. After returning to Pakistan, he started practicing dentistry and set up Alvi Dental Hospital.

In 1981, Alvi was Chairman of the first Pakistan International Dental Conference. In 1987, he became Chairman of the Third Pakistan International Dental Conference. He became Patron of the Fifth Pakistan International Dental Conference. In 1997, Alvi became a Diplomate of the American Board of Orthodontics. He prepared the constitution of the Pakistan Dental Association and went on to become its president. He also served as Chairman of the 28th Asia Pacific Dental Congress. He served as Dean of the Faculty of Orthodontics of the College of Physicians and Surgeons Pakistan. In 2006, he was elected as the President of Asia Pacific Dental Federation. The next year, he was elected as a Councillor of the FDI World Dental Federation.

Alvi began his political career as a polling agent and joined a religious party. While studying at De'Montmorency College of Dentistry, he became an active member of the student unions. He became politically affiliated with Islami Jamiat Talaba, a student wing of Jamaat-e-Islami Pakistan (JI) and went on to become president of the student union. In an interview, he told that during his early days, he was a critic of the Ayub Khan regime and was shot twice while participating in a protest in 1969 at The Mall, Lahore; a bullet still remains lodged in his body. He became politically active after Zulfikar Ali Bhutto announced the 1977 Pakistani general election. He ran for a seat on the Provincial Assembly of Sindh as a candidate of the JI from a constituency in Karachi in 1979 but was unsuccessful. In 1988, he quit JI and left politics. According to Alvi, he left the party because he had become disillusioned with their narrow focus on politics and had "always felt honest leadership is the real solution to Pakistan’s problems".

On 18 August 2018, he was nominated by PTI as its candidate for the office of President of Pakistan. On 4 September 2018, he was elected as 13th President of Pakistan in the 2018 Pakistani presidential election. He received 352 electoral votes and defeated Fazal-ur-Rehman and Aitzaz Ahsan who secured 184 and 124 votes, respectively. Upon getting elected as the President, Alvi thanked Prime Minister Imran Khan, and the government coalition for their support. He became the third President of Pakistan whose family migrated to Pakistan from India after the Partition of India. On 5 September 2018, he relinquished his National Assembly seat. On 9 September, he replaced Mamnoon Hussain and was sworn in as 13th President of Pakistan. On 17 September, he addressed the National Assembly for the first time in his capacity as president. In 2018, he started the Presidential Initiative for Artificial Intelligence & Computing (PIAIC).

Alvi is married to Samina Alvi. The couple has four married children. Alvi is an avid reader, with subjects of interest including quantum physics, the fourth industrial revolution, artificial intelligence, blockchain and cloud computing, while in terms of intellectual influences he considers his mentors to be Plato, Karl Marx, Mawdudi and Thomas Piketty.