NYU professor, bestselling author and forecaster Dr Maha Hosain Aziz is on a mission to help others make sense of an evolving world order. She is a leading voice in global risk and future trends, and one of the few women in this male-dominated field. Cited by economist Nouriel Roubini as “a... Read more
NYU professor, bestselling author and forecaster Dr Maha Hosain Aziz is on a mission to help others make sense of an evolving world order. She is a leading voice in global risk and future trends, and one of the few women in this male-dominated field. Cited by economist Nouriel Roubini as “a global thinker to watch,” she has crafted a unique portfolio career spanning academia, advisory work, thought leadership and creativity to better explain the future to a global audience.
As a professor at NYU’s International Relations MA program, Maha uses AI tools to develop data-driven indices, leads the annual global risk prediction project with research partner Wikistrat, the world’s first crowdsourced consultancy, and leverages qualitative research to illustrate risk trends. She serves as an advisor to the World Economic Forum on its Global Foresight Network, following a five-year term on the Global Future Councils on Frontier and Complex Risk. Maha is also co-chair in AI Policy at think tank The Digital Economist overseeing research on tech risks and opportunity, and acts as a senior advisor to the C-suite via Enlighten Advisory, a boutique global advisory firm.
She has authored a trilogy of books on global affairs, including seven-time award-winning bestseller Future World Order (2019), and sequels Global Spring: Predictions for a New World Order (2026) and 10 Shock Events by 2030 (2026). She also drew the world’s first political comic book The Global Kid (2016), fulfilling her childhood dream to be a cartoonist! It won seven awards and was followed up by the ten-time award-winning VR/AR version in 2021. Maha is also working on a generative AI-assisted comic book about global extremism, entitled Evolution. She is a former Businessweek columnist who still writes in media outlets including the Financial Times, World Economic Forum, Huffington Post, Vanity Fair, Newsweek, CNN.
A global citizen with Pakistani roots, Maha has lived in seven countries, including Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Greece, Malaysia, Singapore, the UK and the US. She previously taught at the London School of Economics (LSE) and SOAS, and holds several degrees in social sciences from Brown (BA), Columbia (MA) and the LSE (MSc, PhD).