Sharif Fakhr has more than 15 years of experience in finance, business development, strategy, and operations. He has led hospitals, academic medical centers, health systems, and biotech and pharmaceutical companies through transformation in finance, operations, research administration, business development, process improvement, and strategy. His expertise helps organizations manage financial and operational risks for stability and growth.

About Sharif

Sharif helps healthcare and life sciences organizations comply with regulations and improve their business operations for sustainability, agility, and growth. He provides support and technical expertise in research program effectiveness assessments, and he advises organizations in the process of ensuring regulatory compliance to manage financial exposure and operational risks. Sharif’s experience includes helping organizations with internal investigations, business operations assessments, compliance program enhancement, performance improvement, acquisition due diligence, and financial restructuring.

Across his career, Sharif has:

• Led an assessment of federally sponsored clinical trials for an academic medical center, revealing potential discrepancies in the amount of residual funding from grants. The team reviewed these grants and residual balances, providing a financial summary to legal counsel of the activity and recommendations of how to fulfill obligations to the grant funding agency to maintain compliance.
• Served as the interim director of a grants office at a leading U.S. children’s hospital, managing and overseeing pre-award and post-award activities related to the research portfolio. The assignment included the identification of grant opportunities, human resources, training, education, policy and procedure development, award submissions, and post-award management.
• Led a research program enhancement initiative for a recently acquired community hospital, now under a major U.S. health system, helping develop the mission, strategy, organizational structure, and enhancements to the research program. The engagement enabled the community hospital to administer government-sponsored research grants.
• Guided the evaluation and compliance review of all financial activity for sponsored research on a multiyear, multisite award at a major academic medical center. The review led to the enhancement of the sponsored project research program through a reorganization of the research administration, updated workflows, new policies and standard operating procedures, a training and education program tied to performance, and the development of key performance indicators (KPIs) and metrics to monitor productivity and effectiveness.
• Served as the interim director of the clinical trials office at a Virginia-based health system, recommending and implementing the centralization of key research administration activities and tasks, which included oversight of clinical trial pre-award and post-award activities, to ultimately realize streamlined operations and economies of scale through cost savings.
• Led an audit of time and effort reporting and certification for grant studies awarded to an academic medical center over a three-year period. The engagement was expanded to include nonpersonnel expenditures and financial reporting. The audit led to enhanced processes for time and effort reporting as well as training and education on time and effort compliance for all researchers.

Prior to Huron, Sharif served as a managing director at the consulting business Ankura. He has held leadership roles at FTI Consulting and other professional services firms, as well as at healthcare and life sciences organizations, including Pfizer and Columbia University Medical Center.

Sharif earned his Master of Business Administration from Columbia Business School and his Bachelor of Arts in mathematical sciences from Binghamton University. He holds certifications in OnCore Financials and Research Administration.

Dedicated to giving back to his community, Sharif volunteers with Hands Along the Nile Development Services (HANDS), as a math tutor, and as a counselor and event assistant for nonprofit organizations.