Bilal Baloch

Bilal Baloch is a Partner at Shorooq Partners, an early-stage venture capital fund based in Abu Dhabi. He is also Co-Founder and Board Member at Enquire AI. Previously, he was a Lecturer and Regional Director of the South Asia and Middle East & North Africa program at the Lauder Institute, Wharton School. From August 2017 to June 2019, Bilal was a CASI Postdoctoral Research Fellow. At CASI, Bilal focused on the political economy of government decision-making in India and other developing democracies. His book, based on his doctoral and postdoctoral work, When Ideas Matter: Democracy and Corruption in India, was published by Cambridge University Press in Fall 2021 (paperback in 2023).

Bilal has presented academic papers at several international conferences, including the annual meetings of the American Political Science Association and the International Studies Association. In addition to his scholarly publications, his commentary has appeared in a number of outlets including The Guardian, Foreign Policy, and The Washington Post, among others.

Prior to earning his Ph.D., Bilal was an Associate at Macro Advisory Partners and, prior to this, Chief of Staff to Dean Vali Nasr at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) in Washington, DC. While at SAIS, he co-founded the annual SAIS Emerging Markets Series alongside former First Deputy Managing Director of the IMF, John Lipsky. He also assisted in editing and contributed research toward Nasr’s book, The Dispensable Nation: American Foreign Policy in Retreat (2013). Bilal has taught undergraduate and graduate courses in international management and political economy at Johns Hopkins University and the University of Pennsylvania.

Bilal completed his undergraduate studies in philosophy, logic, and the scientific method at The London School of Economics, where he was the Anthony Giddens Scholar, and holds a Master’s degree in international relations from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, where he was the Samuel J. Elder Scholar. He earned his doctorate in political science with graduate funding from Oxford University.

Bilal sits on the board of multiple technology startups as well as the Advisory Board of the LSE Alumni Association. You can follow him on Twitter @BilalABaloch