Dr. John Rutledge is Chief Investment Officer of Safanad, a global principal investment house, and a member of its Investment Committee, directing investments in marketable securities, private equity and real estate. Dr. Rutledge is also an Economics Contributor to CNBC, wrote the Business Strategy column for Forbes magazine for more than a decade and was a regular cast member of Forbes on Fox for many years. He is Senior Research Fellow at Claremont Graduate University where he teaches Complexity economics and finance and chairs dissertations. He is a member of the board of directors and audit committee member of Jason Corp., a NASDAQ listed company. He is also a member of the board of directors of a number of privately-owned companies including Trident USA Healthcare, FC Compassus LLC., Pace Health Companies, Pansophic, Early Learning Academies, and Element Critical.
Dr. Rutledge has had a long career in private equity investing. He was special advisor at Kelso & Company, where he was an investor and served on many boards of directors including General Medical, American Standard Corp., Earle M. Jorgenson Company, United Refrigeration Services, and Ellis Communications. He is founder of Rutledge Capital, a private equity investment firm focused on US middle market companies, where he led more than 30 leveraged buyouts including Medical Specialties Group, StairMaster, Adobe Air, FluidDrive, and CROM Corp. He has advised Fortune 500 CEOs and institutional investors on restructuring, capital management, and investment issues.
Dr. Rutledge was one of the principal architects of the Reagan Economic Plan in 1980-81, an adviser to the Bush White House on tax policy and Iraq and has testified before Congress on economic issues. He has also advised government leaders in the UK, China, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and North Korea.
Dr. Rutledge has extensive interests in China. He is Honorary Professor at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the Harbin Institute of Technology, Hunan University, the China Communications University and the Chinese Agriculture University. He was awarded Beijing’s Great Wall Friendship Award in recognition of his role as a trusted advisor to China’s top officials. He served as advisor to Cheng Siwei, Vice Chairman of the Standing Committee. And he is founder of Tara’s Kids, a non-profit organization that has built libraries, kitchens, and computer labs in more than a dozen primary schools in rural villages.
Dr. Rutledge is the author of three books and many academic and policy studies. His written work has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, The New York Times, the Financial Times, Barrons, Fortune, Business Week, US News and World Report, Corporate Finance, China Daily, the Arab Times, the Frankfurter Allgemeine, and Les Echos.
Dr. Rutledge holds a BA and Doctor of Letters degrees from Lake Forest College and a PhD in economics from the University of Virginia.