Heather Kipnis

Sr Operations Officer - Global Lead, Entrepreneurship and Inclusive Business, IFC

Heather is the Women’s Entrepreneurship Product Lead for IFC’s Gender Secretariat. In this role, she is the global technical specialist advising clients, project teams, and partners on how to close gender gaps in entrepreneurship, with the goal of unlocking opportunities for increased profit, growth and innovation for both IFC clients and women entrepreneurs in emerging markets. Additionally, she leads global product development, partnerships, and research for new advisory and investment solutions that support women entrepreneurs.

Heather brings over 15 years of experience in international development and financial services across Latin America & the Caribbean, Sub-Saharan Africa, and the Middle East. Previously, Heather was a Global Gender Specialist with IFC’s Banking on Women (BOW) Program supporting the development of the BOW advisory solution which has been delivered to over 35 financial institution clients. Prior to IFC, Heather managed the programs and educational activities for a network of 75,000 women-led small to medium enterprises and held positions in impact investing and private wealth management.

Heather has an MBA in Global Management from Thunderbird School of Global Management and a Bachelor of Science in Decision and Information Sciences from University of Florida. She serves on the Advisory Committee of the Global Impact Investing Networks (GIIN) gender-lens investing initiative.