Vikram Mansharamani is an economist, business author, global trend watcher, and public speaker who has spent his career studying market forces and providing guidance to companies. He is widely regarded as a top thought leader in the fields of business, economics, and finance, focusing particularly on the subjects of risk management and navigating uncertainty. He has published two books, as well as multiple essays in respected publications, including Bloomberg, Fortune, Forbes, and The New York Times.
As a young man, Vikram Mansharamani attended Yale University, where he graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree. His academic achievements at Yale prompted an invitation to join the national collegiate honor society Phi Beta Kappa. Mansharamani continued his studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, eventually earning two master’s degrees and a PhD.
Beginning in 2009, Vikram Mansharamani taught undergraduate and graduate classes at Harvard and Yale Universities on the subjects of financial instability, economic inequality, governance and business ethics, and systems thinking.
In 2011, his first book, Boombustology: Spotting Financial Bubbles Before They Burst was published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Based on a popular undergraduate seminar he developed titled ‘Financial Booms & Busts’, the book outlines a multi-disciplinary framework for pinpointing financial bubbles and describes tell-tale signs for reliably predicting upcoming economic downturns.
In 2012, Vikram Mansharamani founded Kelan Advisors, LLC. Headquartered in the Greater Boston Area, the firm acts as counsel to several Fortune 500 companies, helping their senior teams make complex decisions by creating scenarios, questioning assumptions, and conducting pre-mortem analyses. Since the firm’s inception, its services have been in great demand by corporations looking for ways to capitalize on emergent global circumstances. Mansharamani remains the president of the company.
For two successive years, in 2015 and 2016, Mansharamani was given the title of ‘#1 Top Voice in Money, Finance, and Economics’ by LinkedIn. The following year, he was singled out and profiled by Worth Magazine for its annual ‘100 Most Powerful People in Global Finance’ list.
Between 2017 and 2022, Vikram Mansharamani served as a featured lecturer at Harvard University. During his time there, he gained a reputation for teaching students to consider as many perspectives as possible when confronted with a difficult decision.
In 2020, Mansharamani released Think for Yourself: Restoring Common Sense in an Age of Experts and Artificial Intelligence, a 304-page think piece extolling the virtues of critical thinking, and advocating for a decrease in the reliance on technology and the prevailing consensus opinions of experts in individual decision-making processes. The book was published by Harvard Business Review.
He was asked to join the Board of Directors of Werner Enterprises in 2021 and was subsequently appointed to the company’s Audit, Nominating and Governance, and ESG (Environmental, Social, and Corporate Governance) committees.
A strong proponent of public service, Vikram Mansharamani made a bid for one of New Hampshire’s seats in the United States Senate during the 2022 election cycle, ultimately losing in the Republican primary. He has since become a Board Member at Josiah Bartlett Center, The Warren B. Rudman Center for Justice, Leadership & Public Service, and The World Affairs Council of New Hampshire.
In his role as a global trend watcher, Vikram Mansharamani is known for taking a comprehensive view of any issue he chooses to address, taking great care to investigate how each piece interacts with others, as well as the greater whole. “It’s not okay to look at the world just economically and politically. You need to think about what’s happening in technology and other science and engineering fields. And it’s not okay to just look at those three. You have to pay attention to what’s happening in social or demographic dynamics,” he told journalist Sandy Laycox in an interview with Leader’s Edge in February of 2021, adding, “My main message here is that, to navigate uncertainty, it’s really important to focus on connecting dots.”
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