Dr. John Sfakianakis is the Head of Strategy & Chief Risk Officer of The Paratus Group. He serves as the Chief Economist of the Gulf Research Center; a Senior Advisor with Bain & Company and Colombo Wealth SA.
Previously he was the Managing Director of Arch Emerging Partners for West Africa and the Middle East. In Riyadh he was Middle East Director for the Ashmore Group. His other former positions have included chief investment strategist at MASIC, a Saudi family-owned investment company; chief economic adviser to the Saudi Ministry of Finance; group general manager and chief economist, Middle East North Africa region for Credit Agricole C.I.B.; chief economist, Saudi British Bank (SABB/HSBC); and chief regional economist, Samba Financial Group. He also has served as adviser at the Ministry of Economy and Planning in Saudi Arabia and as economist at the United Nations (UNDP) and the World Bank.
He is a Fellow at the Judge Business School and Pembroke College, at the University of Cambridge; an Associate Fellow at Chatham House (Royal Institute of International Affairs); a board member of the University of California, Berkeley, Center for Entrepreneurship, and Innovation. He is the Vice Chairman of the board of governors of Summer Fields, Oxford; a Trustee of the Maclaren Foundation and the Gulf Research Center in the UK.