THE FOREIGN POLICY INSTITUTE

Afshin Molavi

Fellow, The Foreign Policy Institute

Founding Director, Global Emerging and Growth Markets Initiative

Senior Advisor, Oxford Analytica

Afshin Molavi is non-resident fellow at The Foreign Policy Institute and founding director of the Global Emerging and Growth Markets Initiative (GEGMI). Formerly, Molavi co-founded the World Economy Roundtable at the New America Foundation where he served as a senior fellow writing on the geopolitics and geoeconomics of the Middle East and Asia. He is currently a senior advisor at Oxford Analytica, the global macro analysis and advisory firm.

Molavi’s areas of research interest include “The New Silk Road,” South-South trade, Saudi-China relations, the geopolitics of energy, multinational consumer companies and the emerging middle class, China’s economic footprint in the Middle East, the UAE as a geo-commercial and geo-economic hub, global commercial aviation, the increasing global reach of emerging market multinationals, Iran’s oil and gas sector, India’s ties with the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states, and commercial hub cities from Singapore to Dubai to Miami.

Molavi’s articles and commentaries have appeared in the New York Times, the Financial Times, Businessweek, the Washington Post, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, the Journal of Commerce, National Geographic, Institutional Investor, The National, Asharq AlAwsat, The Majalla, and several academic and specialty publications. He is a frequent guest and member of the GX20 of CNN International’s “Global Exchange”, the most widely viewed emerging markets-focused program on broadcast television.

A graduate of the Johns Hopkins University Paul H Nitze School of Advanced International Studies in Middle East history and international economics (M.A, ’97), he was named by the World Economic Forum in Davos as a Young Global Leader, a collection of leading thinkers, political figures, scientists, academics, and civil society actors.

Molavi has also worked at the International Finance Corporation, the private sector development arm of the World Bank Group, where he headed civil society and public affairs strategies for the Middle East and North Africa and Southern Europe and Central Asia. He also served as Middle East/North Africa advisor for a leading security risk consultancy and has been a journalist based in Riyadh, Jeddah, Dubai, Tehran, and Washington.