Mary Ellen Iskenderian is the President and CEO of Women’s World Banking, a global nonprofit dedicated to serving the nearly one billion women excluded by the formal financial sector. She joined in 2006 and leads the global team in partnering with financial institutions and policymakers to design solutions that facilitate systemic change for women, while overseeing the organisation’s asset management business that invests directly in financial service providers.

Mary Ellen is a passionate advocate for women’s economic empowerment through greater access to finance, urging the industry to view low-income women as a powerful new market. She speaks and publishes widely on financial inclusion, climate resilience, and financial abuse, and is author of “There’s Nothing Micro About a Billion Women: Making Finance Work for Women” (MIT Press).

Before Women’s World Banking, she spent 17 years at the International Finance Corporation (World Bank Group) and previously worked at Lehman Brothers. She holds an MBA from the Yale School of Management and a BS in International Economics from Georgetown University.