Elaine Zuckerman

Elaine Zuckerman is President and Founder of Gender Action, the only
organization dedicated to promoting gender equality and women’s rights in all International Financial Institution (IFI) investments. She worked inside the IFIs for two decades. At the World Bank she worked as an economist on China and in the gender unit, and she also created the first World Bank advocacy program to prevent the harmful impacts of structural adjustment loans on the poor, especially women. At the Inter-American Development Bank she developed its first strategy for the Amazon that prohibited further investments in roads, ranching and migration -- which had damaged indigenous societies and the environment -- and encouraged investments in health, water, sanitation, education and renewable resources, and she coordinated the IDB’s Social Agenda Policy Group. At Gender Action, Elaine leads and oversees programmatic, fundraising and other activities. Elaine studied in China during the Cultural Revolution and holds degrees in Political Economy from McGill University, the University of Toronto and Beijing University and in Business Administration from Georgetown University. She speaks and reads Chinese, French and Spanish.