Dr. Rania Azmi is the Founder of Alexandrite Decisions, a NATO registered management consultancy and training firm that fuses her three interests of investment strategy, academia and cancer patient advocacy. Based in Kuwait, she was strategic adviser to the Kuwait Sovereign Wealth Fund for over 10 years and has had a long career in academia and is a member of the executive education board at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.  One of her particular interests is decision making.

Our conversation traces her career journey, why she chose finance, and how she developed an interest in decision making.  We turn then to institutional  investment in the Middle East and the issues that dominate the discourse there at present, including matters of ESG integration.

One of Rania’s passions is cancer patient advocacy – an area sadly that she never originally sought, but stepped into when she saw gaps and a need for improvement.  We talk about that as well as her experience in the world of finance as a muslim woman.

Series 1 of the 2022 Fiftyfaces Podcast is brought to you with the kind support of Heard Capital, a Chicago-based asset manager invests in public equities in the technology, media, telecommunication, financial and industrial sectors.  The firm was founded in 2011 and manages assets via a long/short fund and a long-only fund.