Jan. 10 (Reuters): Kashya Hildebrand is a workaholic “risk taker” who overcame a disruptive childhood move from her native Pakistan after the sudden death of her father to become a player on Wall Street and later a leading art promoter.

It was at hedge fund Moore Capital in New York that she first made a name for herself and met future husband Philipp Hildebrand, who resigned yesterday as head of the Swiss central bank because of a lucrative currency trade Kashya made weeks before he imposed a curb on the value of the Swiss franc.

The couple moved from London to Switzerland after Kashya became pregnant, and their daughter was born in 2000.

Very little is known about the 50-year-old woman at the heart of a scandal that has shaken Switzerland, raised questions about its sacred bank secrecy and pushed out its slick young bank governor at a critical time for the country.

Kashya’s brother Daneyal Mahmood, a gallery owner who lives in New York, uses words like “fearless” to describe his sister, who studied economics at Boston College before moving to New York. “She was a good student, but I would not say exceptional. Kashya is far more pragmatic and action-oriented. Kashya’s genius emerges when you let her loose in the world. I would definitely describe her as a self-made woman,” Mahmood said.

People who have worked with her gallery are full of praise for her drive and willingness to “follow her gut” on artists who might not seem commercially viable. Philipp Hildebrand himself touched on this streak last week. “Well, let’s say my wife is a strong personality,” he said.

Daneyal says his sister takes after their mother, Katharine Shepard Salter, an American from Wisconsin who loved to travel and settled in Pakistan after meeting her husband, a colonel in the army. After their father died in a car accident in 1967, the family moved from Rawalpindi to suburban Connecticut.

Kashya graduated from Boston College in 1983 and moved to New York, where at first she did menial temp work while living above a fish market in the Hell’s Kitchen area of Manhattan.