YASMINA ZAIDMAN

Chief Partnerships Officer, Acumen

Yasmina Zaidman is the Chief Partnerships Officer at Acumen, an organization working to change the way the world tackles poverty by investing in companies, leaders and ideas. She leads its work to engage with strategic corporate partners and institutions that share Acumen’s commitment to supporting entrepreneurial approaches to tackling poverty. She is a frequent public speaker at conferences on social impact, impact investing and philanthropy, and recently published articles in FastCompany and Ethos Magazine on corporate philanthropy.

Previously, Ms. Zaidman initiated and developed partnerships for the $22 million Pioneer Energy Investing Initiative to bring energy access to 8 million people living off the grid. She was the founder of the Water Portfolio at Acumen, where she invested in start-up water and sanitation enterprises in India and East Africa that have brought safe drinking water to over seven million people and access to sanitation to hundreds of thousands. She led Acumen’s Communications work for six years, helping to position Acumen’s unique approach in Time, Forbes, Fortune, The Economist, The NYT and across broadcast media.

Ms. Zaidman has worked in the arenas of international development, corporate sustainability and social entrepreneurship for twenty-five years. She is on the board of Cacao de Colombia, a specialty chocolate company supporting marginalized communities in Colombia, and KadAfrica, a social enterprise in Uganda supporting women and girls through agriculture. She received a BA from Vassar College and her MBA from Stanford’s GSB with a certificate in Public Management.