Alexandra Mousavizadeh is a Danish economist and partner at Tortoise Media in London and creator of The Responsibility100 Index and The Global AI Index. She specializes in index creation, using data to build indices that rank nations, companies and other entities on key social and technological issues. She is also the Former Director of the Prosperity Index, a comprehensive ranking of the prosperity of more than 140 countries published annually by the London-based Legatum Institute.
Mousavizadeh then worked for Moody's for 10 years. Based in New York, she covered Emerging and Frontier Markets for the Sovereign Risk team. She then moved to Morgan Stanley in London as Head of Country Risk Management for EMEA, before returning to Moody's as Assistant Vice President for the Africa sovereign ratings portfolio. Alexandra is also the Co-Founder of the Global Disinformation Index, the leading tracker of global misuse of information and deception for political or financial gain.
The Prosperity Index
Alexandra acted as Director of the Legatum Prosperity Index; an annual ranking developed by the Legatum Institute, a division of the private investment firm Legatum. The ranking is based on a variety of factors including wealth, economic growth, education, health, personal well-being, and quality of life. In the 2018 rankings, 149 countries were ranked, and Norway topped the list, followed by New Zealand and Finland. Afghanistan was in last place. In 2013, twenty-seven of the top 30 countries were democracies. The Prosperity Index is reviewed and critiqued by an advisory panel of academics and scholars representing a range of disciplines and includes: Prof Tim Besley ; Dr. Daniel Drezner ; Dr. Carol Graham ; Dr. Edmund Malesky ; Dr. Ann Owen. Before joining the Legatum Institute, Mousavizadeh was CEO of ARC Ratings, an Emerging Market-based ratings agency.
Mousavizadeh is currently a partner at Tortoise Media, and Director of the Tortoise Intelligence team. Tortoise Media is a journalistic platform, founded by James Harding, the Former Director of BBC News, Katie Vanneck-Smith, the former President of The Wall Street Journal and Matthew Barzun, Obama's former ambassador to the UK. Tortoise Media is developing a new approach to journalism; responding to the widening gap between powerful institutions and those entities able to scrutinize them. This approach is built around slower, more detailed, and discursive journalism; Tortoise Media calls it 'slow news'. She oversees the development of the team's indices and data analytics projects as Director of Tortoise Intelligence team; which aims to contribute data-driven findings and to substantiate the slow news approach.
The Responsibility100 Index
Alexandra recently published the Responisibility100 Index, currently in its first beta edition; the Index ranks the companies of the FTSE 100 on there CSR contributions; with reference to the UNSustainable Development Goals. The Index has already been recognised by a range of the companies and other non-governmental organisations, as a comprehensive expression of the action and commitment being made in alignment with the Sustainable Development Goals. The Index is composed of seven main sub-pillars; gender equality, climate, good business, waster, water, human rights and poverty. It contains 52 unique indicators and draws on over 5,000 data-points to build a dynamic portrait of each company in the ranking. The Index does, however, call for greater transparency and better reporting to expand this data-set. It is published quarterly from January 2020.
Alexandra, and her team, have announced the publication of the Global AI Index in December 2019. The index will draw on a range of primary data to measure the capacity for artificial intelligence – specifically through the processes of innovation, investment and implementation – amongst OECD nations.
