Ranjani Sankaran

Ranjani Sankaran, Executive Director, Project & Export Finance at Standard Chartered based in London, has nearly 20 years of experience in project finance in emerging markets, predominantly across sub-Saharan Africa and with a focus on power, infrastructure, and natural resources project financings. Ms. Sankaran has been with Standard Chartered’s Project & Export Finance team for 15 years and has acted as financial advisor, structuring bank, and mandated lead arranger on numerous pathbreaking and award-winning project debt financings, for various multinational corporates, private equity funds, and international developer clients.  

Prior to Standard Chartered, Ms. Sankaran worked at the U.S. Millennium Challenge Corporation from its inception in 2004, financing sovereign-sponsored projects in emerging economies across Africa, Asia & the Pacific, and Eastern Europe.  Prior to that, she worked on producing the Africa Policy Advisory Panel’s Report on capital markets and financial sector development in sub-Saharan Africa, whose mandate was to deliver innovative and actionable recommendations to Secretary of State Colin Powell as part of strengthening U.S-Africa policy.

Ms. Sankaran holds an MBA (Finance) from London Business School, an MA in International Development Studies (Economics) from GW’s Elliott School of International Affairs, and a BA with Distinction in Economics from the University of Pennsylvania.  She is also an Advisory Council member for the Bhutan Foundation and co-Founder of the Flore Foundation.