Farid Abolfathi, Ph.D.

Senior Director – Risk Center, IHS Markit

Farid Abolfathi is the senior director for IHS Markit's RiskCenter in Washington, D.C.

Dr. Abolfathi's areas of specialization include country risk analysis and macroeconomic forecasting. His research experience in these areas spans more than four decades. He currently heads the Risk Center at IHS Markit where he manages and leads development of various risk services. Dr. Abolfathi currently is responsible for managing three of the company's risk services: the Global Risk Service, the Sovereign Risk Service, and the Banking Risk Service. In addition, he has been part of the international forecasting team of IHS Markit and two predecessor companies. These include Standard & Poor's DRI, a major US economic forecasting organization that became part of Global Insight in 2001, and now is part of IHS Markit. Earlier, Dr. Abolfathi served as senior associate at the Policy Sciences Division of CACI, Inc. from 1974 to 1982, and served as an independent research contractor in Washington, D.C. from 1982 to 1992, as consultant to many US government agencies on economic, defense and foreign policy issues and presented his research findings to intelligence analysts, policy makers and academic audiences.

After high school education in London, England, Dr. Abolfathi attended university in the US, attaining a Bachelor of Science from the University of Oregon and both a Master of Arts and a doctorate of Philosophy from Northwestern University.