Badr Jafar is the CEO of Crescent Enterprises, a diversified conglomerate operating across nine industry sectors in 15 countries. Badr is actively engaged with a diverse range of non-profit organisations and initiatives focused on humanitarian aid and international development, strategic philanthropy, corporate governance, entrepreneurship, education and the arts, including serving as a member of the UN Secretary General’s High-Level Panel on Humanitarian Financing and the UNESCO International Commission on the Futures of Education. Badr is also appointed to serve on the Advisory Committee and as a Special Representative for Business & Philanthropy & Private Sector for the 28th Conference of the Parties (COP28) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). In 2010 Badr founded the Pearl Initiative, in collaboration with the UN Office for Partnerships, to promote a corporate culture of transparency and accountability within the Gulf Region. He is also the Founding Patron of the Centre for Strategic Philanthropy based at the Cambridge Judge Business School, which is dedicated to enhancing the impact of strategic philanthropy both within and from the world’s fastest growing economies; and is the Founding Patron of MENA’s first Strategic Philanthropy Initiative at NYU Abu Dhabi to study and promote high-impact philanthropy in the region.