DAI’s Brigit Helms to Co-Chair SID-Washington Development Finance Workgroup

January 25, 2018

Brigit Helms, DAI’s Senior Principal Strategic Advisor for Strategy and Marketing, will co-chair the Development Finance Workgroup for the Washington Chapter of the Society for International Development (SID-Washington) for the next two years.

The Development Finance Workgroup is a group of individuals actively engaged in finance architecture and the monetary tools of development. With events ranging from the involvement of international lending to the relevance and strength of microfinance, this workgroup aims to inform and educate on any and all development issues that relate to finance.

As co-chair, Brigit will operate the workgroup with the following goals: bring together diverse constituencies (nongovernmental organizations, the private sector, academia, policy-makers, multilateral institutions, etc.) representing multiple perspectives, both at the national and international levels; mobilize and strengthen roles of all stakeholders by actively building partnerships among them and with other sectors; and highlight and engage thought leaders and individual experts within the region or sector.

Brigit has nearly 30 years of experience pioneering innovative approaches to financial inclusion and seeking enterprise and market-based solutions to poverty. She came to DAI after leading the Multilateral Investment Fund, an innovation lab of the Inter-American Development Bank making investments equaling $85 million a year. Prior to this, she was Chief of Party of the SPEED program in Mozambique, leading DAI’s work to improve the business environment and competitiveness of the economy there. Brigit originally came to DAI from McKinsey & Company in Seattle.

DAI develops innovative investment strategies, blended finance solutions, and alliances to tackle development challenges. DAI’s current portfolio of projects in this field are in: Haiti, Ukraine, and Mozambique—as well as integrating regional financial markets in support of trade across East and Southern Africa and Central Asia. DAI is also leading the Office of Private Capital and Microenterprise Invest program, a flagship U.S. Agency for International Development program to research, develop, and build “blended finance” solutions for development challenges.