Room 185

Join Kavita Ramdas, President and CEO of the Global Fund for Women, a publicly supported grantmaking foundation that advances human rights by investing in women-led organizations worldwide, for lunch. She will speak about her experience running the Fund, as well as her current research on women as agents of social change and human rights defenders.

Kavita is Executive Director of Ripples to Waves: a program on Social Entrepreneurship and Development at Stanford University’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. She conceptualized and designed the program with key faculty leaders to deepen the links and learning opportunities among grassroots activism, global philanthropy, academia and the private sector while empowering social entrepreneurs to share ideas on gender, democracy and civil society.

From 2010 through Spring 2011, Kavita was a Visiting Scholar and Fellow at Stanford University’s Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law CDDRL, at The Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, and at the Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society, PACS. In Spring 2011, she also served as Practitioner-in-Residence at Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs.

Kavita served as President and CEO of the Global Fund for Women, from 1996 to 2010, which grew under her leadership to become the world’s largest public foundation for women’s rights. During her tenure, the Global Fund’s assets increased to $21 million from $3 million, giving women in more than 170 countries critical access to financial capital that fueled innovation and change.

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