Funding innovation and innovative funding: Addressing the pioneer gap in fragile places

Alix Zwane, CEO of the Global Innovation Fund, will discuss how alleviating poverty and reducing fragility requires a pro-development, market-based approach to gather in new ideas and additional financial flows. In her view, patient and long-term investment capital is a critical component for breaking the extreme poverty cycle.

Alix Zwane has 20 years of experience advancing the agenda of evidence-based aid and international development as an investor, a social entrepreneur, and an innovator herself. She has worked at the intersection of the evidence and innovation agendas from a diverse set of posts. Among her various roles, Alix was the first employee and Executive Director at Evidence Action, which under her leadership catalysed school-based deworming for hundreds of millions of children around the world, and the provision of safe drinking water for millions of people in four countries.