PhD Class Profile - 2011-12

Berkeley-Haas PhD student Tarek Ghani was among 30 students from around the country selected to receive a Soros New American Fellowship, which recognizes the contributions and promise of young people who are recent additions to the ranks of Americans.

As an undergraduate at Stanford, Ghani took a year off to serve as special assistant to his father, who had returned to Afghanistan after 9/11 to serve as the country's finance minister. After graduation, Ghani oversaw a $15 million grant budget designed to promote transparency and accountability in Liberia's government program for the philanthropic organization Humanity United.

Ghani says he has chosen to earn his PhD at the Haas School because he believes its faculty is particularly attuned to analyzing the economic and political challenges posed by a new era of globalization and thus best suited to support his ongoing global research relating to crime, conflict, and corruption.