Sadek Wahba

Sadek Wahba (born March 18, 1965) is an American economist and businessman. He is the founder and managing partner of the Miami-based global infrastructure investment company I Squared Capital, and the author of Build: Investing in America's Infrastructure. In 2022 he was appointed by President Biden to the President's National Infrastructure Advisory Council.

Early life and education Wahba is the great-grandson of Egyptian prime minister and jurist Youssef Wahba. His grandfather, Mourad Wahba, was a high court judge.

Wahba was born in Cairo and attended the Collège de la Sainte Famille. He has a Ph.D. in economics from Harvard University, where his thesis advisors were Gary Chamberlain and Guido Imbens, winner of the 2021 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences. His research at Harvard was on measuring causal inference in social studies. He subsequently joined Lehman Brothers, where he worked on structured financing. In 1998, he joined Morgan Stanley, where he started Morgan Stanley Infrastructure Partners and was Chief Executive Officer of Morgan Stanley Infrastructure.

In 2012, Wahba formed I Squared Capital, a U.S.-based private equity group that invests in infrastructure projects in the U.S. and in developing economies, particularly China and India. The group manages over $50 billion in assets, including a commitment from the U.S. government's Overseas Private Investment Corporation to invest in Southeast Asia. The firm’s assets are focused in the energy, utilities, transport, digital infrastructure and social sectors in the U.S., Europe and in select high-growth economies including China, India and Latin America. I Squared Capital's portfolio companies employ over 66,000 professionals.

He cites the 2021 Texas power crisis as an example of the "crisis" caused by long-term under-investment in domestic infrastructure and neglect. In addition to tax-funded investment, Wahba proposes additional infrastructure investment sources including pension funds, the creation of an infrastructure IRA, overseas capital and the establishment of a public-private infrastructure bank.

Wahba writes frequently about infrastructure issues. His articles advocating greater investment in infrastructure and increased use of private investment include "Can the Private Sector Bring About the 'Greening' of Infrastructure" (Forbes), "US Infra Funding Needs More Than Just a Tax Hike", "The U.S. Needs an Infrastructure Bank That Models the World Bank" (The Hill), "Biden's Billion-Dollar Infrastructure Plan Needs a Dedicated IRA to Pay for It" (Miami Herald), "Pension Funds Can Launch a New Infrastructure Era" (Pensions & Investments), "A Three-Step Action Plan to Save US Infrastructure" (Infrastructure Investor), "Upgrading our Crumbling Infrastructure Could Recession-Proof Our Nation" (Miami Herald) and "America's Private-Capital Advantage" (Foreign Affairs).

Wahba is a published author on economic research, including articles in the Journal of the American Statistical Association and The Review of Economics and Statistics, as well as other publications and proceedings, in addition to the book Build:Investing in America's Infrastructure. One of his publications was selected by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology as one of its 50 most influential papers in the last 50 years. His research at Harvard included labor migration and worker remittances as a source of foreign capital to emerging markets.

He has appeared frequently on Bloomberg, CNBC, Nasdaq, The Hill, Financial Times, Foreign Affairs, '''Yahoo! Finance, and TD Ameritrade.

He is a member of the President's Infrastructure Advisory Council. a member of the board of trustees of the American University in Cairo, He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the Global Advisory Council of the Wilson Advisory Center, the board of directors of the Miami Cancer Institute and the Everglades Foundation.

In 2019, Wahba became the only person to receive the "Global Personality of the Year" award from Infrastructure Investor magazine twice and Global Infrastructure Personality of the Decade by Private Equity International (PEI).

In 2023, the Wilson Center announced the Wahba Institute for Strategic Competition'', an initiative intended to support policy reforms that strengthen American leadership.