Badr Jafar

Badr Jafar (born 9 August 1979) is an Emirati businessman from Sharjah, chief executive officer of Crescent Enterprises and president of Crescent Petroleum. Educated at Eton and Cambridge, he founded the Pearl Initiative for corporate governance in 2010, served as the COP28 Special Representative for Business and Philanthropy, and was appointed the UAE's Special Envoy for Business and Philanthropy in 2024. ^{1 2}

Jafar — in full Badr Hamid Jafar — was born on 9 August 1979 and was born and raised in Sharjah. ^{1 3} In 1994 he studied at Eton College, and he graduated from the University of Cambridge with a master's degree in engineering and additional studies in astrophysics, subsequently attending the Cambridge Judge Business School. ¹ He is married to Razan Khalifa Al Mubarak, managing director of the Environment Agency Abu Dhabi and president of the International Union for Conservation of Nature, and they have two children. ¹

Jafar is chief executive officer of Crescent Enterprises, a UAE-based conglomerate, president of its sister company Crescent Petroleum, chairman of Pearl Petroleum, which develops natural gas assets in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, and chairman of the executive board of the port and logistics operator Gulftainer. ¹ In 2010 he founded the Pearl Initiative, a non-profit launched at the United Nations to promote corporate governance across the Gulf, and in 2011 he was named a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum. ¹ The United Nations Secretary-General appointed him to the High-Level Panel on Humanitarian Financing in 2015, and he was subsequently appointed to UNESCO's Futures of Education International Commission. ¹ He served as the COP28 Special Representative for Business and Philanthropy in 2023 and chaired its inaugural Business and Philanthropy Forum; in May 2024 he was awarded the Order of Zayed, and in September 2024 he was appointed Special Envoy for Business and Philanthropy for the United Arab Emirates. ¹ In 2018 he and his wife joined The Giving Pledge, and in 2025 he was named on the inaugural Time 100 Philanthropy list. ¹

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