JAMES ANDERSON was elected chairman of the board of Kinnevik in April 2021. Previously he was partner at Baillie Gifford, where he led the firm’s European Equity Team, co-founded the Long Term Global Growth Strategy in 2003 and chaired the International Growth Portfolio Construction Group (2003-2019), including as co-manager of the Vanguard International Growth Fund. He was also manager of Scottish Mortgage Trust during 2000-2015 and joint manager in the period 2015-2022. Mr. Anderson is currently trustee at Johns Hopkins University and member of the Investment Committee, Senior advisor to the board of Antler Group and chair of Panmure House Price Panel, as well as member of the investment committee of University College, Oxford.
In 2011 Mr. Anderson decided to endow a professorship for an adjunct professor at the Bologna campus of SAIS in recognition of the important role adjunct professors coming from all over Europe have played in educating generations of SAIS students in Bologna, offering them different viewpoints on topics of international affairs and enriching the academic debate at SAIS Europe.
Held by Sanam Vakil
SANAM VAKIL is the James Anderson Adjunct Professor at the Johns Hopkins University SAIS Europe; and director of the Middle East and North Africa Program at Chatham House. Previously, she was the deputy director and a senior research fellow in the program. Dr. Vakil leads the Iran Forum project focusing on future trends in Iran’s domestic and foreign policy and follows GCC and Gulf Arab dynamics alongside wider regional security issues in the Middle East. She has been a visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University associated with the Working Group on Islamism and the International Order.
Before these appointments, from 2003-2005, Dr. Vakil was an assistant professor of Middle East Studies at SAIS Washington. She served as a research associate at the Council on Foreign Relations also providing research analysis to the World Bank’s Middle East and North Africa department. Dr. Vakil provides research, commentary and political risk analysis for companies and organizations working in the Middle East. She has been consulted by high-ranking government officials in the United States and Europe. Dr. Vakil holds a PhD in international relations from SAIS. She is the author of numerous monographs, book reviews, working papers, and articles in U.S. and international journals on Middle East and U.S. foreign policy.