Avinash Persaud's career spans finance, public policy and academia. He is Emeritus Professor of Gresham College and an advisor to Governments on financial policy. He was Chair, CARICOM Commission on the Economy and is currently Special Envoy to Prime Minister Mottley, the current Chair of the Development Committee of the IMF and World Bank.

He is a former senior executive at GAM London, State Street, J. P. Morgan and UBS. He was Chairman, regulatory sub-committee of the UN Commission on Financial Reform; Chairman, Warwick Commission; Member of the UK Treasury’s Audit and Risk Committee and the Pew Task Force to the US Senate Banking Committee; Visiting Scholar at the IMF and ECB and Distinguished Advisor, Financial Sector Law Reform Commission of India.

He is a former Governor, London School of Economics and 2010 President of the British Association for the Advancement of Science (Section F). He was elected Trustee of the Global Association of Risk Professionals and the Royal Economics Society. He won the Jacques de Larosiere Award in Global Finance from the Institute of International Finance and was voted one of the top three public intellectuals in the world on the financial crisis by a panel for Prospect Magazine.