Mr. Jafar is Chief Executive Officer of Crescent Enterprises and President of Crescent Petroleum. He also serves as Chair of Gulftainer and Pearl Petroleum. In 2010, Mr. Jafar founded the Pearl Initiative, a nonprofit 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 actively engaged with a number of higher education institutions in addition to American University of Beirut, including as a member of the Advisory Boards of the MIT Legatum Centre for Development and Entrepreneurship, the Cambridge Judge Business School and the American University of Sharjah. He is the Founding Patron of the Centre for Strategic Philanthropy based at the Cambridge Judge Business School, which is dedicated to enhancing the impact of strategic philanthropy both within and from the world’s fastest growing economies; and is the Founding Patron of the Gulf Region’s first Strategic Philanthropy Initiative at NYU Abu Dhabi to study and promote high-impact philanthropy. As a supporter of the arts, he founded the non-profit Middle East Theatre Academy and is a member of the Middle East Institute’s International Advisory Council, Guggenheim Middle Eastern Circle, the Artistic Director’s Circle of The Old Vic Theatre Trust and the Kennedy Center’s Centennial Circle. Mr. Jafar graduated from Eton College, UK and completed his Master’s in Engineering from the University of Cambridge, along with a Business Degree from the Cambridge Judge Business School, UK.