Vikram Mansharamani

Author, Boombustology

Dr. Vikram Mansharamani is a global trend-watcher who shows audiences how to anticipate the future, manage risk, and spot opportunities. He first gained widespread attention with the release of his book Boombustology: Spotting Financial Bubbles Before They Burst. Since then he’s gone on to show corporate leaders and investors how to look at the world differently in order to navigate today’s radical uncertainty. His strategies help them peer into the future on crucial areas like China, food, the global economy, Africa, housing, investig, financial cycles, energy, and much more. So valuable are his insights that LinkedIn named Vikram #1 on their 10 Top Voices for Money, Global Economics, and Finance for both 2015 and 2016. Worth magazine listed him on their “Power 100” list for 2017 – one of the 100 most powerful people in global finance.

Vikram believes that the future doesn’t have to surprise us – and won’t – if we regularly step away from our expertise and look at the world through multiple lenses. He calls this the generalist’s mindset. When encountering information that seems irrelevant most people think, “So what?!” Generalists think instead, “Isn’t that interesting,” and look to connect disparate dots. When they do, the conclusions they draw and decisions they make may be very different from the more narrow-focused “experts.” Vikram shows audiences practical ways to use this approach to spot opportunities and reduce risk.

From 2009 until 2017, Vikram was a Lecturer at Yale University where he taught three popular classes: “Financial Booms and Busts,” “Economic Inequality,” and “Adventures in Business Ethics.” He is now a Lecturer at Harvard’s John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences where he teaches a course called “Humanity and Its Challenges.” His research is focused on navigating complex uncertainties and risk.

Vikram is also global equity investor with more than 20 years’ experience investing in public and private markets. He served as Managing Director of SDK Capital (and its predecessors) and today manages the Kelan Global Opportunities Fund, a global thematic investment partnership founded to exploit his generalist approach to developing market insights.

Vikram’s ideas and analysis has appeared in numerous online and offline media, including the PBS Newshour, Bloomberg, MarketWatch, CNBC, Forbes, Fortune, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, YaleGlobal, The South China Morning Post, The Korea Times, The Khaleej Times, and The Daily Beast, among others. He also contributed the summary chapter for the book A Force for Good (2015) synthesizing lessons drawn from the collection of essays written by the world’s most prominent thinkers on the role of finance and capitalism in today’s increasingly interconnected and unequal world.

He is a frequently sought-after speaker by a wide range of organizations. And while corporations from virtually every industry have sought his insights, he continues to have a very strong following in the investment community. He regularly speaks with those focused on allocating large pools of capital. Audiences of sovereign wealth funds, family offices, endowments, foundations, and registered investment advisors have found tremendous value in his unconventional thinking.

As a consultant, Vikram helps clients analyze the business impact of global trends, with an emphasis on economic, political, and social risks that might generate instability and risk. He conducts many executive education seminars for senior leadership teams on how to integrate disparate (and seemingly contradictory) information into actionable analysis to drive business decisions. His thematic analysis and risk management is always focused on identifying opportunities within the risks.

He earned a Ph.D. and MS from the Sloan School of Management at MIT, an MS in Political Science from MIT, and a BA from Yale University, where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. He currently lives in Lexington, MA with his wife, daughter, son, 2 cats, and a golden retriever.