Mohamed A. El-Erian

Rene M. Kern Practice Professor, The Wharton School; Chief Economic Advisor, Allianz

Mohamed A. El-Erian is a Senior Global Fellow at The Lauder Institute and the Rene M. Kern Practice Professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. A widely followed leader in economics and finance, El-Erian is Chief Economic Advisor at Allianz, Chair of Gramercy Funds Management, and former President of Queens’ College at the University of Cambridge. El-Erian’s previous appointments also include Chairman of President Barack Obama’s Global Development Council, CEO of the Harvard Management Company, Deputy Director of the International Monetary Fund, and CEO/co-CIO of PIMCO.

In addition to being a contributing editor at the Financial Times, columnist for Bloomberg Opinion, and author of two New York Times bestsellers, El-Erian was named four years in a row to Foreign Policy’s list of “Top 100 Global Thinkers.” He is credited with identifying and coining the concept of the “New Normal” in 2009 to describe the likely sluggish economic performance of advanced economies after the 2008 global financial crisis, and for pointing out in 2016 the limitations to protracted and sole reliance on central bank policies.  His latest book, written with Gordon Brown and Michael Spence, is Permacrisis: A Plan to Fix a Fractured World.

El-Erian earned his MPhil in economics from the University of Oxford in 1982 as well as his PhD in 1985, and received his bachelor’s degree from the University of Cambridge in 1980.