Afshin Molavi is a Senior Fellow at the Foreign Policy Institute of the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), where he writes broadly on emerging markets, particularly on themes related to 'The New Silk Road,' South-South trade, global hub cities, new emerging market multinationals, global aviation, the geopolitics of energy, and the intersection of Middle East states and the global economy.

Molavi was also a Senior Research Fellow at the New America Foundation, a non-partisan think tank, and a former director of the World Economic Roundtable, an ambitious effort to re-map the global economy in the wake of the Great Recession. He is also the founder and editor of the New Silk Road Monitor, a site that examines the markets, societies, cultures and politics of countries across Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and beyond (from Bollywood to Bond Markets).

A former journalist with postings in Dubai, Riyadh, Jeddah, and Tehran, his dispatches from the Middle East and essays have been published in The New York Times, Foreign Policy, The Financial Times, Foreign Affairs, Newsweek, Businessweek, The Journal of Commerce, National Geographic, and dozens of academic and specialty publications. He is also a contributing writer to the Washington Post Global Opinions section and, most recently, to Newsweek Japan.

He is a regular speaker at investment conferences, universities, think tanks, and the media, and has also served as an analyst at the International Finance Corporation, the private sector development arm of the World Bank, and is co-founder of emerge85 Lab, an initiative dedicated to exploring change in the emerging world and its global impact.