The Power of Political Foresight in Global Economics

A dedicated intellectual entrepreneur, Ian Bremmer's career spans the academic, investment, and policymaking communities. His analytical focus has been on global emerging markets -- those countries where politics matter at least as much as economic fundamentals for market outcomes. Ian's work to define the business of politics has accordingly focused on making political science relevant to the global marketplace.

Ian received his PhD in political science from Stanford University in 1994. He went on to join the faculty of the Hoover Institution where, at age 25, he became the institution's youngest-ever national fellow. He has held research and faculty positions at Columbia University (where he presently teaches), the EastWest Institute, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, and the World Policy Institute, where he has been a senior fellow since 1997.

His research focuses on states in transition, global political risk, and US foreign policy. His six books include the forthcoming The Fat Tail: The Power of Political Knowledge for Strategic Investing (with Preston Keat), and The J Curve: A New Way to Understand Why Nations Rise and Fall, selected by the Economist as one of the best books of 2006. Ian has also published more than 200 articles and essays in the Harvard Business Review, Fortune, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, the Financial Times, the Wall Street Journal, and the New York Times, among others. He is a regular contributor for the International Herald Tribune and Slate; a contributing editor at the National Interest, Foreign Policy, and Survival; and a political commentator on CNN, FoxNews, and CNBC.

In 1998, with $25,000 in hand, Ian founded Eurasia Group. Through advisory work and, in 2001, the creation of a Global Political Risk Index (now cobranded with Citigroup), Eurasia Group was the first to bring political science methodology to Wall Street to assess risk. Today, Eurasia Group is the preeminent global political risk consultancy, with 100 full-time employees in New York, London, and Washington; as well as 480 experts in 65 countries worldwide. Widely respected for its objectivity, Eurasia Group works with more than 200 financial, corporate, and government clients on six continents.

Throughout his career, Ian has advised world leaders on US foreign policy, including US presidential candidates from both the Democratic and Republican parties, British shadow Chancellor George Osbourne, and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.