Elena Panaritis

The Brilliant Greek Economist Spearheading Global Change Through Transformality

"Leaders do not settle for a status quo of scarcity, problems and victimization; they lead a change in circumstances in order to create prosperity for all. They create the reasons WHY we should engage with them to drive this change."

Elena Panaritis is an economist, policy innovator, entrepreneur, and leader of Thought4Action, an action tank spearheading transformative policy reforms. Guided by a passion for practical innovation, she has revolutionized the concept of informality, a condition of socioeconomic marginalization and insecurity affecting 2 in every 3 people globally.

Drawing from her experiences, including at the World Bank and IMF, she focuses on identifying bottlenecks in economic and political infrastructures and articulating innovative strategies to address them. Her work has improved the lives of 30 million people through a pioneering methodology that weaves theory and practice on the ground. In her book Prosperity Unbound: Building Property Markets with Trust (2007), she challenges outdated development approaches and sets out a clear framework to tackle informality, which has since been successfully implemented in Peru, Thailand, and elsewhere.

Her contribution to economics has initiated new research in institutional economics, earning recognition from the World Bank and US Government. She appears routinely on broadcast TV (BFMTV, CNN, BBC), leading global media (Financial Times, The Guardian) and is a multiple-time TedX speaker.

She has taught at Johns Hopkins-SAIS, INSEAD, and is a faculty member at FSI's Center for Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law (CDDRL) at Stanford. She served as a Greek Parliamentary and senior advisor to three Greek Prime Ministers, handling the sovereign debt crisis and bailout.