EBD

Elizabeth Boggs Davidsen

United Nations Development Program (UNDP)

Director, SDG Impact (Sustainable Development Goals Impact Initiative)

https://www.linkedin.com/in/elizabethboggsdavidsen/

Presentation

Elizabeth Boggs Davidsen is a Senior Executive, advisor, and global expert in social innovation and impact investing with the strategic vision to create and deliver financing and business models that produce sustainable, scalable business development. A clear communicator and consensus builder, Ms. Boggs Davidsen is recognized for uniting senior government and ministry officials, corporate executives, nonprofit leaders, and institutional investors worldwide around a common purpose. Her international policy expertise and management of complex global operations are hallmarks of her career. Currently, Ms. Boggs Davidsen is the Director of the Sustainable Development Goals Impact Initiative (SDG Impact), a global flagship of the United Nations Development Program. SDG Impact is focused on eliminating barriers and driving more integrity for sustainable investment at scale. She was invited to devise a strategic plan and subsequently appointed to lead SDG Impact based on her past success creating new financing vehicles and business models to increase impact investing in the developing world. Ms. Boggs Davidsen created both the vision and mission followed by the business plan, office, and operations. The international, professional experts she assembled and manages are developing the tactics for global scale. To drive adoption for SDG Impact, she identified international sustainability champions to serve on the Global Steering Group. For the majority of her career she held leadership roles at the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) with annual lending of $13B in Latin America and the Caribbean. Ms. Boggs Davidsen led the Impact Investing portfolio of the largest fund administered by IDB, the ($1.9B) Multilateral Investment Fund (MIF). As Chief of the MIF Impact Investing portfolio, she directed $35M in annual investments and grants. These Knowledge Economy and Impact Investments cultivated technology, innovation and entrepreneurship to promote inclusive growth and job creation in LAC. Earlier, she was the Principal Investment Officer for Opportunities for the Majority (OMJ) and as its principal architect and designer led the first dedicated office within a development finance institution in financing inclusive business models using market-based principles. The IDB allocated $250M for OMJ. Ms. Boggs Davidsen achieved an annual mobilization target of 3:1 by leveraging investment partner networks and scaling tested market-based approaches to development. She began her career with UNDP in Khartoum, Sudan and then served as a Program Officer for the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime in Vienna, Austria for five years. Ms. Boggs Davidsen earned a MS in Foreign Service from Georgetown University’s Edmund Walsh School of Foreign Service, a MA in Spanish from Middlebury College in Madrid, and a BA of Political Science and Spanish from Middlebury College in Vermont. She and her husband have three adult children and live the greater Washington, D.C. area.