Biography of Jacqueline Novogratz

Acumen Fund is a non-profit venture fund that uses entrepreneurial approaches to solve the problems of global poverty. The organization seeks to build financially sustainable and scalable organizations that use market-based solutions to reach the four billion people on earth living on less than $4 a day. Acumen Fund raises charitable contributions from individuals, corporations and foundations, which it invests – in the form of loans, equity and occasional grants – in order to build financially viable organizations that will deliver affordable, critical goods and services to under-served groups at the Bottom of the Pyramid (BOP). Acumen Fund also provides intensive managerial and technical assistance to both non-profit and for-profit enterprises in order to help them suceeed (sicsic). Investments to date include drip irrigation in India, long-lasting anti-malaria bednets in Africa and housing for the poor in Pakistan. The organization works in six countries in South Asia and Africa with offices in the U.S., India, Pakistan, and Kenya.

Prior to Acumen Fund, Jacqueline founded and directed The Philanthropy Workshop and The Next Generation Leadership program at the Rockefeller Foundation. She also founded Duterimbere, a microfinance institution in Rwanda. She began her career in international banking with Chase Manhattan Bank. She is currently on the advisory boards of Stanford Graduate School of Business and of Innovations Journal published by MIT Press. She is an Aspen Institute Henry Crown fellow and a Synergos Institute Senior Fellow. She is a frequent speaker at international conferences, including the World Economic Forum, the Clinton Global Initiative and the TED Conference.