About Me
Jacqueline Novogratz has spent her career focusing on building new business models and supporting role models in the pursuit of building a world that puts humanity and the earth at its center, not profit. In 2001, she founded Acumen to invest the right kind of capital in the right kind of character to solve our toughest problems of poverty. To date, the organization has invested more than $125 million of patient capital into nearly 130 companies impacting the lives of 308 million poor customers across Africa, Latin America, South Asia and the United States. Acumen also has launched KawiSafi, an impact fund focused on off-grid solar in East Africa. Acumen also cultivates a new kind of leader through its Fellows Programs and +Acumen, its online school for social change. To date, the organization has built a corps of 500+ Fellows, and more than 500,000 individuals from 193 countries have taken +Acumen's online courses. Acumen is now reimagining a global university designed to integrate the transformational depth of its fellowships with the scale of +Acumen to equip thousands of young changemakers with the tools and ecosystem to lead in today's world. To measure what matters rather than what we can count, Acumen developed a metrics tool to gain understanding of impact from the perspective of low-income clients. Lean Data was spun out of Acumen into a standalone company called 60 decibels in 2019.
Jacqueline is the author of, Manifesto for a Moral Revolution: Practices to Build a Better World, a book of twelve principles to renew the world. Her best-selling memoir The Blue Sweater chronicles her quest to understand poverty and bring dignity to the poor.
Jacqueline sits on the board of the Aspen Institute and 60 decibels; and is on a variety of advisory boards. In 2017, Forbes listed Jacqueline as one of the World's 100 Greatest Living Business Minds.