Elie is a banker with 30 years of experience in New York, Philadelphia, London and Riyadh; where for most of the 1990′s he was chief executive officer of Arab National Bank. At age 54, he joined London University’s School of Oriental and African Studies as a student to attain an M.A. in History and Ph.D. His doctoral dissertation was published in a book titled Experiments in Achieving Water and Food Self-Sufficiency in The Middle East: The Consequences of Contrasting Endowments, Ideologies, and Investment Policies in Saudi Arabia and Syria. Elie is the author of the The Islamic Shield: Arab Resistance to Democratic and Religious Reforms. "You can bring in money and water and you can make the desert green until either the water runs out or the money" Quoted in the New York Times, Mideast Facing Choice Between Crops and Water, July 21 2008