Mohamad Khouja

Dr. Mohamad W. Khouja is the founder and long-serving Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Wafra, the New York–based alternative-investment manager he established in 1985 to manage assets on behalf of Kuwait's Public Institution for Social Security (PIFSS). Multiple filings and aggregators date his tenure as Chairman/Director/CEO from December 1986. Under his leadership Wafra grew into a global alternatives platform; reported assets under management range across sources from roughly $8.9 billion (advisory entity) to approximately $28 billion (the broader Wafra platform), spanning real estate, real assets, GP-stake/strategic partnerships, and structured products.

Before founding Wafra, Khouja built a career at the intersection of economics, development finance, and Gulf investment. He served as an economic advisor to the Kuwait Fund for Arab Economic Development from 1969 to 1982, and as senior advisor to the Kuwait Real Estate Investment Consortium from roughly 1982 to 1987. Earlier, he was an Associate Professor at Oklahoma State University (1966–1971). He also participated in international policy work as a member of the IMF–World Bank Task Force on Foreign Direct Investment in Developing Countries (1978–1980) and the IMF–World Bank Task Force on Non-Concessional Flows to Emerging Countries (1980–1981).

Academically, Khouja holds a B.S. in Business Administration and an M.S. in Economics (with Indiana University cited for the master's), and a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of California, Berkeley. In his role at Wafra he is described as setting the firm's strategic direction, conducting global economic assessments, and positioning the firm's investment products across domestic and international markets.

It is worth flagging a data-quality caveat: because "Mohamad Khouja / Mohamad W. Khouja" appears on several overlapping profile aggregators (and because Wafra has multiple related legal entities such as Wafra Investment Advisory Group and Wafra Capital Partners), some public records conflate details. The picture consistent across sources is a single senior figure: the founding CEO/Chairman of Wafra.

• Invests as an institutional allocator/manager, not a startup angel: Wafra deploys long-term, permanent-style institutional capital on behalf of a sovereign pension owner (PIFSS).
• Core strategies emphasize real estate, real assets/infrastructure, and strategic partnerships (including GP stakes / seeding and backing alternative-asset-management firms) plus structured products.
• Orientation toward long-duration, prosperity-preservation mandates — Wafra frames its mission around "building long-term prosperity for asset owners globally."
• No publicly stated personal angel/seed thesis or standard check size for early-stage startups could be verified; treat any "seed round" classification with skepticism absent primary confirmation.