Tariq Fancy

Tariq Fancy founded The Rumie Initiative after a career at the intersection of finance, technology and emerging markets. His successful business career and unique decision to found Rumie has been chronicled in case studies and profiles published by both Harvard Business School and INSEAD Business School.

Prior to Rumie, Tariq led a successful career in finance, beginning as a Palo Alto-based technology investment banker in the group that led the IPOs of Google, Amazon and Cisco. He next joined NYC-based private equity firm MHR Fund Management, where he became the firm’s youngest partner in 2006 after leading numerous successful turnarounds of technology companies. He subsequently spent two years at Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPPIB) in Toronto, Canada, helping to create and invest in new credit strategies for the growing platform.

In 2004, after trips to Central and South America and months of due diligence, Tariq led early work to bring mobile phones into emerging markets as a ‘leapfrog’ innovation – back when the idea of the masses from Cairo to Calcutta skipping landlines altogether to go directly to mobile phones sounded far-fetched to many. Tariq sees a similar ‘perfect storm’ of market forces enabling a pragmatic, market-based solution to the global skills gap that will usher in another watershed moment in international development. Since being founded in 2013, Rumie is now used in over 100 countries.

Tariq has appeared on CNBC, ABC, BNN, the CBC, has spoken at the United Nations, and guest lectures at Harvard Business School. He has been published in USA Today, the Globe and Mail, and the Financial Post, and his work has been featured in Bloomberg, Reuters, the Economist, the Financial Times, the Guardian, the Independent, the Telegraph, and Forbes. In 2017, he was named one of Canada’s Top 40 under 40.

Tariq holds an Honors B.A. with distinction from Brown University in the US, spent one year studying at Oxford University in the UK, earned a master’s degree in Economics and Public Policy from Sciences Po Paris (L’institut d’études politiques de Paris) in France and an MBA with distinction from INSEAD in France and Singapore.