Badr Jafar

Badr Jafar is CEO of Crescent Enterprises, a multinational company headquartered in the UAE, with diversified global businesses across six core sectors. He is also President of Crescent Petroleum, the region’s first independent and privately-owned petroleum company in the Middle East.
 
Badr serves as Chairman of Gas Cities LLC, a joint venture between Crescent Petroleum and Dana Gas PJSC, and as Chairman of Pearl Petroleum, a five-member international consortium for the development of natural gas assets in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq.
 
Badr is active in a variety of other industries including ports and logistics, serving as Chair of the Executive Board of Gulftainer (the world’s largest private container port operator), and private equity, serving as a member of the boards of The Abraaj Group (UAE) and GrowthGate Capital (Bahrain).
 
In 2010, Badr founded the Pearl Initiative, a non-profit venture in cooperation with the United Nations Office for Partnerships to promote a corporate culture of transparency and accountability across the Gulf Region of the Middle East. He is an appointed member of the United Nations Secretary General’s High-Level Panel on Humanitarian Financing to address and examine the growing humanitarian finance crisis.
 
Through his passion for social entrepreneurship, he sits on the Global Board of Education for Employment (EFE), is a member of the Synergos Arab World Social Innovators (AWSI) Program Board of Governors, serves as a member on the Board of Advisors of Gaza Sky Geeks and is a Founding Board Member of Endeavor UAE, an initiative encouraging high-impact entrepreneurship.
 
Badr is active with higher education institutions, serving as member of the Advisory Boards of Cambridge University Judge Business School, American University of Beirut and American University of Sharjah. He is a member of the Research and Innovation Advisory Council for The Centre of Excellence for Applied Research & Training (CERT) at the Higher Colleges of Technology in Abu Dhabi.  
 
As a keen advocate of the arts, he is an appointed member of the Guggenheim Middle Eastern Circle, the Artistic Director’s Circle of The Old Vic Theatre Trust, Kennedy Centre’s Centennial Circle and co-founder of the Middle East Theatre Academy. In 2014, Badr was awarded the Gold Medal in the Arts by the Kennedy Centre International Committee on the Arts for his work to bridge cultures through music and theatre.
 
Badr is a member of the Young Presidents’ Organisation, serving as Ex-Officio Chair of the YPO Emirates Chapter. Badr was honoured as a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum, is Co-chair of their Family Business Community, a Global Agenda Trustee for Economic Growth and Social Inclusion and a member of the Global Future Council on the Humanitarian System.
 
Badr’s personal Blog can be found on badrjafar.com and Twitter feed @BadrJafar