Mohamed A. El-Erian is Chief Economic Advisor at Allianz, the corporate parent of PIMCO where he formerly served as chief executive and co-chief investment officer (2007-14), and President-Elect of Queens’ College Cambridge. He is a columnist for Bloomberg View, a contributing editor at the Financial Times, Professor of Practice at The Wharton School (University of Pennsylvania), and Senior Global Fellow of the Lauder Institute.
He first joined PIMCO in 1999 and was a senior member of PIMCO’s portfolio management and investment strategy group. He rejoined the company at the end of 2007 after serving for two years as president and CEO of Harvard Management Company, the entity that manages Harvard’s endowment and related accounts. Before coming to PIMCO, he was a managing director at Salomon Smith Barney/Citigroup in London and before that, he spent 15 years at the International Monetary Fund in Washington, D.C. where he served as Deputy Director before moving to the private sector.
He served as Chair of President Obama’s Global Development Council from December 2012 to January 2017. He has published widely on international economic and finance topics. His 2008 book, When Markets Collide, was a The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal bestseller, won the Financial Times/Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year and was named a book of the year by The Economist and one of the best business books of all time by The Independent (UK). He was named to Foreign Policy’s list of “Top 100 Global Thinkers” for four years in a row. Since 2014, he has been serving on the jury for the Financial Times/McKenzie Book of the Year award. His latest book, published in January 2016, The Only Game in Town: Central Banks, Instability and Avoiding the Next Collapse, is a The New York Times bestseller and was named “one of the 25 of the most inspiring books everyone should read” by Inc.
He has served on several boards and committees, including the U.S. Treasury Borrowing Advisory Committee, the International Center for Research on Women, the Peterson Institute for International Economics, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, the IMF’s Committee of Eminent Persons and the New York Fed’s Investor Advisory Committee on Financial Markets. He is currently a board member of Barclays, Under Armour, the NBER (Executive Committee), Berggruen Institute (Executive Committee), KAUST, and other educational institutions. In 2018, he was appointed to the IMF’s External Advisory Group on Surveillance and MIT’s Visiting Committee for the Department of Economics. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the Investcorp external committee, and government advisory committees. Since 2007, he has been chair of Microsoft’s Investment Advisory Board, co-chair of the Capital Campaign for the University of Cambridge and its Colleges, and has served as senior advisor to Gramercy.
Recognized for his philanthropic contributions, particularly in the areas of education and health, he has received several awards, including lifetime achievement from the 57357 Hospital for Children/Egyptian Cancer Network where he is the Honorary Chair.
He holds a master’s degree and doctorate in economics from Oxford University and received his undergraduate degree from Cambridge University. He is an Honorary Fellow of Queens’ College, Cambridge University.
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