Senior Vice President, Policy 

As Senior Vice President of Policy, Jonathan Chanis is responsible for planning and directing the research, analysis, and writing of SAFE’s policy team. Before joining SAFE, Jonathan taught graduate students at Columbia University about energy security and scenario planning, and he consulted on petroleum and natural gas security, and  supply and value chain management. For the 20 years prior to this, Jonathan traded and invested in energy and emerging market equities, and commodities and currencies. He was a Senior Trader at Caxton Associates, a Vice President at Goldman Sachs’s commodities division ( J. Aron & Co.), and a Managing Director at Tribeca Global Management (a division of Citigroup).

Jonathan also assisted AIG in building its third party asset management business, and was president of several AIG companies including its Russian investment bank. Jonathan holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from the Graduate School, CUNY, and a BA in Economics from Brooklyn College. He has been a member of the Council on Foreign Relations since 1988, and an Associate Member of the Columbia University Seminar on the Middle East since 1997.