Jacqueline Novogratz

Jacqueline Novogratz is an American entrepreneur and author. She is the founder and CEO of Acumen, a non-profit global venture capital fund whose goal is to use entrepreneurial approaches to address global poverty. Acumen has invested over $101 million of patient capital in 92 businesses whose products and services are enabling the poor to transform their lives. Any money returned to Acumen is reinvested in enterprises serving the poor. Currently, Acumen has offices in New York, San Francisco, London, Mumbai, Karachi, Nairobi, Accra and Bogotá.

Jacqueline Novogratz was born in the U.S., the eldest of seven children. She is a graduate from the University of Virginia where she studied Economics and International Relations and has an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business. The title of her book, The Blue Sweater: Bridging the Gap Between Rich and Poor in an Interconnected World, was inspired by an encounter she had while in Kigali, Rwanda. Novogratz spotted a boy who was wearing a blue sweater that, upon closer inspection, (her name was on it) turned out to be the same blue sweater that her mother had given to Goodwill a decade earlier.This encounter led Novogratz to realize the interconnectedness of our world, which influences her work today.

Novogratz started her career at Chase Manhattan Bank as an international credit analyst. After three years, she left banking to explore how to make a bigger difference in the world. This led her to work throughout Africa as a consultant for the World Bank and for UNICEF. As a UNICEF consultant in Rwanda in the late 1980s, she helped found Duterimbere, Rwanda’s first microfinance institution. Novogratz also founded and directed The Philanthropy Workshop and The Next Generation Leadership programs at the Rockefeller Foundation before starting Acumen in 2001. Under Novogratz's leadership, Acumen has grown to serve 125 million people a year through its investments of patient capital in businesses that provide low-income people with critical goods and services. She also oversaw the creation of Acumen's year-long Fellowship program that aims to build the next generation of leadership for the social sector.

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