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Passports to Progress Speaker Bios
Join ICRW March 7 for The Bottom Line: How Big Business is Empowering Women and Girls, a conversation on how and why private businesses are investing in the future of women and girls half a world away. PBS NEWSHOUR's Judy Woodruff will moderate a diverse panel of corporate and social investors brought together by ICRW for the latest event in our continuing Passports to Progress discussion series.
The speakers:
Darlene Daggett
Darlene Daggett is founder and executive director of Ikatu International, an impact investor committed to supporting profitable business enterprises that have the potential to enhance youth employment opportunities. Ikatu was founded on the belief that the private sector can be a powerful catalyst of change and that providing livelihood opportunities through successful enterprises is a necessity in emerging economies.
With Ikatu's founding, Daggett launched her second career as a social entrepreneur. She had previously spent 18 years at QVC Inc., one of the world's largest e-commerce retailers. While there, Daggett pioneered the exponential development of QVC, growing the business 15-fold to sales of $5 billion. Most recently as president of QVC U.S. Commerce, she was responsible for its strategic development, new business initiatives and critical customer insight.
Daggett is recognized for creating integrated social initiatives including the launch and cultivation of QVC's philanthropic program that involved both large fundraising efforts and on the ground field work. She continues her strong voice in social business ventures as a delegate at the Clinton Global Initiative, Skoll World Forum and Opportunity Collaboration. She also serves on the boards of the Women's Leadership Board at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, The Breast Cancer Research Foundation, Peabody-Essex Museum, Micro Credit Enterprises and the Sanam Vaziri Quraishi Foundation.
Mary Ellen Iskenderian
Mary Ellen Iskenderian is president and CEO of Women's World Banking (WWB), the world's largest network of microfinance institutions and banks.
Iskenderian joined WWB in 2006 and leads the WWB global team, based in New York. Prior to WWB, she worked for 17 years at the International Finance Corporation, the private sector arm of the World Bank. Before, she worked for the investment bank Lehman Brothers. Iskenderian serves on the Board of Directors of Kashf Microfinance Bank in Pakistan and is a permanent member of the Council on Foreign Relations. She acted as a topic leader for the "Girls and Women" action area for the 2010 Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) annual meeting and served as an advisor for "Girls and Women" for the 2011 CGI Annual Meeting.
Iskenderian holds an MBA from the Yale School of Management and a bachelor of science in International Economics from Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service.
Tara Ann Lundy
Tara Ann Lundy is the concept development manager for Vestergaard Frandsen's Climate Business Unit, where she is responsible for developing integrated environmental and public health programming using carbon financing.
Previously, Lundy worked in the Global Health Fellows Program at USAID where she developed a performance-based financing strategy for their supply chain programs and consulted on the improvements to the Global Health Bureau's budgeting processes. Her experience also includes policy advocacy with the Advance Family Planning program at the Gates Institute, program development and fundraising for a local HIV/AIDS organization, and serving as a program coordinator for Pathfinder International.
Lundy holds master's degrees in business administration and public health from Johns Hopkins University and has more than seven years of experience working in both domestic and international health contexts.
Charlotte Oades
Charlotte Oades is the global director of women's economic empowerment at The Coca-Cola Company where she leads the development and implementation of its global strategy to economically empower women. This includes the global '5 BY 20' initiative to enable the economic empowerment of 5 million women across the Coca-Cola value chain by 2020.
Throughout her career, Oades has held a series of leading roles in marketing, public affairs and communications, and corporate management. Among these roles, she served as the president of Coca-Cola Great Britain and most recently was the European group director of corporate identity, public affairs and communications at The Coca-Cola Company.
Oades is a fellow of The Marketing Society, The Institute of Grocery Distribution and the Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts. She also is a member of the Marketing Group of Great Britain and Women in Advertising and Communications in London. She was listed among Newsweek's "150 Women Who Shake the World" in March 2011. Oades is a founding member of the Women's Leadership Council of The Coca-Cola Company.
Jackie VanderBrug
Jackie VanderBrug is a leader in the emerging global field of gender lens investing, heading the Women Effect Investments initiative out of Criterion Ventures. To create the enabling environment for gender lens investing, VanderBrug cultivates both investors and investment vehicles committed to a gender lens. She works with a wide range of stakeholders, from investors and fund managers to collaborators as diverse as the Women's Funding Network, the Small Business Administration and the Pipeline Fellowship.
VanderBrug's approach to social change blends her experience as an entrepreneur, analyst and strategy consultant. As part of the start-up team at iBasis, she led business development, growing the Internet telecommunications firm from start-up stage through a successful IPO. She cofounded WORK IN PROGRESS, a non-profit social enterprise focused on career development for underprivileged youth. VanderBrug also is a leader in the social capital markets. She was instrumental in the establishment of the pioneering social investing fund, Good Capital, and is deeply immersed in networks reimagining the purpose of capital. Her understanding of the interrelated aspects of social change was first formed as a domestic policy analyst for U.S. Congress and her strategy skills as a management consultant for CSC Index.
VanderBrug serves on the advisory boards of the Social Venture Fund at the Ross School of Business and of the social enterprise, Prosperity Candle. She holds a mathematics degree from Calvin College and an MBA from the University of Michigan.
Judy Woodruff
Broadcast journalist Judy Woodruff has covered politics and other news for more than three decades at CNN, NBC and PBS. After returning to the NEWSHOUR in 2007 as a senior correspondent, she now regularly co-anchors the newly redesigned PBS NEWSHOUR.
For 12 years, Woodruff served as anchor and senior correspondent for CNN, anchoring the weekday political program, "Inside Politics." At PBS from 1983 to 1993, she was the chief Washington correspondent for The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour. At NBC News, Woodruff served as White House correspondent from 1977 to 1982. For one year after that she served as NBC's Today Show chief Washington correspondent.
Woodruff is a founding co-chair of the International Women's Media Foundation, an organization dedicated to promoting and encouraging women in communication industries worldwide. She serves on the boards of trustee of the Freedom Forum, the Newseum and the Urban Institute. She also serves as a member of The Knight Foundation Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics and the board of the National Museum of American History.
Woodruff is a graduate of Duke University, where she is a trustee emerita. Woodruff is the recent recipient of the Cine Lifetime Achievement award, a Duke Distinguished Alumni award, the Edward R. Murrow Lifetime Achievement Award in Broadcast Journalism/Television, and the University of Southern California Walter Cronkite Award for Excellence in Journalism, among others.