Speakers List 2012

Please check per speaker. You will find videos and presentations as far as agreed to be published.

Platzhalter Speakers
Vicky B. Escarra
US

CEO of Opportunity International

Biography

As CEO, Vicki leads Opportunity International’s efforts to bring savings-based microfinance services to millions of clients throughout the developing world. Named to The NonProfit Times’ Power and Influence Top 50 for three years consecutively, she joined Opportunity in September 2012 with extensive executive experience in the nonprofit and corporate sectors.

From 2006-2012, Vicki was president and CEO of Feeding America, the nation’s largest domestic hunger relief organization. She led Feeding America through the most significant period of advancement in its three-decade history, elevating it to a $1.2 billion organization. Vicki oversaw the organization through a transition from America’s Second Harvest to Feeding America, increased fundraising by 300 percent, and almost doubled the number of people served who were living in poverty or food insecurity.

Under her leadership, Feeding America also established several corporate partnerships with multimillion dollar commitments from Walmart, JP Morgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, Kraft, General Mills and others, growing revenue by four times. Additionally, Vicki successfully led two major pieces of national legislation providing millions of dollars to increase the amount of healthy food for lower income families. She has been profiled in numerous media outlets
including The Wall Street Journal, Chronicle of Philanthropy, USA Today and CBS Evening News. Prior to leading Feeding America, she served as chief marketing officer for Delta Airlines Inc., where she oversaw $15 billion in revenue and led a work force of 52,000.

Abstract

The best of both worlds: a hybrid approach to social enterprise

Opportunity International CEO Vicki Escarra spent 30 years in the private sector before shifting gears to nonprofit management, first at Feeding America, and now leading Opportunity International. Ms. Escarra will give an overview of how she applied her business acumen in transforming Feeding America into the U.S.’s largest hunger-fighting organization and what her plans are to plot a new growth trajectory for Opportunity International.

With Opportunity International as a case study, Ms. Escarra will examine a stacked capital approach to nonprofit management, where both earned and philanthropic income play integral roles in the organization’s mission. What are the management challenges within, and how does Opportunity International overcome them?  Ms. Escarra will detail Opportunity’s unique hybrid approach to microfinance from the sources of its capital to its investment approach and its private-equity styled commitment to clients based in some of the world’s most challenging locales.