Badr Jafar is a businessman and social entrepreneur from the United Arab Emirates. He is the CEO of Crescent Enterprises, a diversified business operating across nine industry sectors in 15 countries, and President of Crescent Petroleum, the first independent and privately-owned petroleum company in the Middle East. He also serves as Chairman of Gulftainer, the largest privately-owned container port operator in the world, and Chairman of Pearl Petroleum, the largest natural gas producer in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq.

Badr is also actively engaged with a diverse range of non-profit organisations and initiatives focused on humanitarian aid and international development, corporate governance, entrepreneurship, education and the arts, including serving as a member of the United Nations Secretary General’s High-Level Panel on Humanitarian Financing and the UNESCO International Commission on the Futures of Education.

In 2010, Badr founded the Pearl Initiative, a non-profit, private sector-led organisation committed to promoting a corporate culture of transparency and accountability across the Gulf Region of the Middle East, in cooperation with the United Nations Office for Partnerships. He is also the Founding Patron of the Centre for Strategic Philanthropy based at the Cambridge Judge Business School and the Strategic Philanthropy Initiative at the New York University Abu Dhabi.

Badr holds a Master’s Degree in Engineering from the University of Cambridge and a Business Degree from the Cambridge Judge Business School.