In conversation with

HEBA SALEH | Cairo Correspondent, Financial Times

The live stream will be available on June 14 at 5pm CEST

Jihad Azour is the Director of the Middle East and Central Asia Department at the International Monetary Fund where he oversees the Fund’s work in the Middle East, North Africa, Central Asia and Caucasus. Mr. Azour served as Lebanon’s Finance Minister in 2005-08, during which time he coordinated the implementation of important reforms, including modernizing the country’s tax and customs systems. Before and since his time as finance minister, he held a wide range of positions in the private sector, including McKinsey and Booz and Co. where he was a Vice-President and Senior Executive Advisor. Prior to joining the IMF in March 2017, he was a Managing Partner at investment firm Inventis Partners. Mr. Azour holds a PhD in International Finance and a post-graduate degree in International Economics and Finance, both from the Institut d’Etudes Politiques de Paris. He also did research on emerging economies and their integration into the global economy as a post-doctoral fellow at Harvard. Mr. Azour has published several books and articles on economic and financial issues and taught extensively.

Kristin Fabbe is a Jakurski Family associate professor in the Business, Government, and International Economy Unit at Harvard Business School. Her primary expertise is in comparative politics, with a regional focus on the greater Mediterranean region. Her first book, Disciples of the State: Religion and State-Building in the Former Ottoman World (Cambridge University Press, 2019) examines the role of religious elites, institutions, and attachments in state-building and modernization initiatives in Greece, Turkey, and Egypt. She is currently researching a second major project on social cohesion and crises, particularly economic shocks, severe austerity measures, and large demographic changes.  In other work, Kristin uses surveys and qualitative methods to examine legacies of violence, post-conflict reconciliation, refugees and forced-migration, secularization, democratic durability and state-business relations. She has conducted fieldwork in Turkey, Greece, Egypt, Iraq, Morocco, Saudi Arabia and Cyprus. At HBS, Kristin teaches the course Globalization and Emerging Markets. Kristin is a faculty affiliate at the Middle East Initiative at the John F. Kennedy School of Government’s Belfer Center and the Harvard Center for European Studies. She sits on the steering committee of Harvard’s Center for Middle East Studies and the AlWaleed Islamic Studies Program. She is an Associate Editor at the Review of Middle East Studies.