Dr Mohamed A. El-Erian has worked on economic and financial issues in both the public and private sectors. Currently, he is the President of Queens’ College, the University of Cambridge. Since 2014, he has served as Chief Economic Advisor at Allianz, the corporate parent of PIMCO where he formerly served as chief executive and co-chief investment officer. (2007-14). He is Chair of Gramercy Fund Management, a columnist for Bloomberg View, a contributing editor at the Financial Times, and a member of the UnderArmour and several non-profit boards.
Dr. El-Erian had a very international upbringing. He was born in New York to an Egyptian father and French mother, but spent his youth in Cairo along with short periods in Europe where his father attended meetings of the UN law commission due to the diplomatic nature of his job. He later moved to the UK and received most of his education there. In 1968, the family moved back to New York when his father took a position at the United Nations. From 1971-73, they lived in France, where El-Erian's father was the Egyptian Ambassador to France.
Dr. El-Erian attended Cambridge University in the U.K for his undergraduate degree, and got his masters and Ph.D. in economics from Oxford. After his doctorate studies, he settled in the US in 1983, taking a position at the International Monetary Fund in Washington, D.C. where he spent 15 years and rose to become Deputy Director before moving to the private sector.
In 1998, Dr El-Erian worked in London at Salomon Smith Barney/Citigroup as managing director before being recruited by PIMCO in 1999 to lead its work on emerging markets.
He re-joined the company as CEO 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. From 2012 to 2017 he served on President Barack Obama’s Global Development Council.
On January 21, 2014, El-Erian resigned from running the $2 trillion investment fund. In an interview following his resignation that shocked the financial world, he said that his young daughter and wife Jamie were at the heart of his decision.
In an essay for Worth he said: “About a year ago, I asked my daughter several times to do something - brush her teeth, I think it was - with no success. I reminded her that it was not so long ago that she would have immediately responded, and I wouldn’t have had to ask her multiple times; she would have known from my tone of voice that I was serious. She asked me to wait a minute, went to her room and came back with a piece of paper. It was a list that she had compiled of her important events and activities that I had missed due to work commitments. Talk about a wake-up call.”
He added: “I had a good excuse for each missed event! Travel, important meetings, an urgent phone call, sudden to-do. But it dawned on me that I was missing an infinitely more important point. As much as I could rationalize it - as I had rationalized it - my work-life balance had gotten way out of whack, and the imbalance was hurting my very special relationship with my daughter. I was not making nearly enough time for her.”
Dr El-Erian remains a member of the parent company's (Allianz) international executive committee, chairs its International Advisory Committee, and is an advisor to the management board.
On October 2020, he took up office as the new president of Queens’ College, a constituent college of the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom.
His philanthropic efforts over the years have emphasized education and health, including major gifts to the Children's Cancer Hospital in Egypt as well as the University of Cambridge and Queens' College.
Among the many recognitions, Dr El-Erian was named to Foreign Policy’s list of “Top 100 Global Thinkers” for four years in a row and, in 2017, to Investment News’ list of 20 market “icons and innovators.” In both 2016 and 2017, Linked-In named him as one of its top three “voices” among its “influencers.” Since 2014, he has been on the jury for the annual for the Financial Times/McKenzie Book of the Year award. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR).
He is also probably best known for his various media appearances and his penchant for publishing his musings on the global economy and market events in large financial media outlets like Reuters, CNBC, Bloomberg and the Financial Times. Dr El-Erian has also published books on international economic and finance topics. His 2008 book, When Markets Collide, was a New York Times and 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). His 2016 book, The Only Game in Town: Central Banks, Instability and Avoiding the Next Collapse, was also a New York Times bestseller.
