Kristen Fanarakis leads the small business policy, entrepreneurship, and innovation initiative within the Milken Institute’s Finance pillar. She focuses on the macroeconomic and systemic trends affecting American small businesses and startups, and the implications for the economy and innovation. Her work engages and educates key stakeholders to address the systemic challenges all entrepreneurs face. 

Fanarakis began her career in investment management at Putnam Investments. She then moved to Wall Street, where she worked for Merrill Lynch, Citibank, and Morgan Stanley in foreign exchange sales and trading, covering the leading institutional quantitative currency investment managers. After she left Wall Street, she comanaged the University of Maryland’s Center for Financial Policy, a Washington, DC-based think tank focused on the intersection of financial markets and regulatory policy. She is also the founder of her own small business, Senza Tempo, a Los Angeles-made, women’s luxury apparel brand. 

She has regularly written and spoken on a variety of policy issues facing the domestic apparel industry, has been quoted in the press, testified before the California State Senate on behalf of other domestic apparel brands, and advocated for domestic manufacturing.

Fanarakis holds a BA in economics and political science from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, an MBA from UNC-Chapel Hill’s Kenan-Flagler School of Business, and an MS in international economics from Suffolk University.