Elizabeth Boggs Davidsen

Elizabeth Boggs Davidsen is the manager of the Knowledge Economy Unit of the Multilateral Investment Fund of the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB).  She is responsible for cultivating the driving forces of the new economy – technology, innovation, and entrepreneurship – in order to promote inclusive growth and job creation in LAC.  She is overseeing a portfolio annually of $30-40 million in grants and investments focused on (i) building the ecosystem for entrepreneurship and innovation (including the social entrepreneurship ecosystem); (ii) testing, investing in, and scaling innovative and tech-driven solutions to social, economic and environmental problems; (iii) and building a competitive and entrepreneurial workforce for the new economy.  Earlier in her career at the IDB she served as the lead architect and principal investment officer for the Opportunities for the Majority Initiative, the first dedicated office within a development finance institution to finance inclusive business models using market-based principles, and for three years she was a policy advisor to the IDB’s Executive Vice President.

Prior to her career at the IDB, Elizabeth was a Program Officer for the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime in Vienna, Austria and for the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in Khartoum, Sudan.  She holds both a Masters in Foreign Service from the Edmund Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University and a Masters in Spanish from Middlebury College in Madrid, Spain. She earned a B.A. from Middlebury College in Middlebury, Vermont.