Professional Experience:
Esther Dassanou is a global leader in gender equity, financial inclusion, and economic empowerment with more than sixteen years of experience designing and delivering large-scale strategies across Africa and emerging markets. Her work sits at the intersection of development finance, philanthropy, and private sector engagement, where she has led enterprise-wide transformation initiatives that expand economic opportunity for women, entrepreneurs, and underserved communities. She is widely recognized for her ability to translate ambitious institutional visions into measurable impact through strategic partnerships, data-driven decision-making, and high-performing teams.
Most recently, Esther served as Director of the Gender Program at the Mastercard Foundation, where she led the development and operationalization of the Foundation’s Gender and Inclusion Strategy. In this role, she helped drive progress toward the Foundation’s goal of enabling 21 million young African women to access dignified and fulfilling work. She developed the Foundation’s programming approach to better equip staff and partners to design programs that effectively reach young women, integrating intersectional considerations such as disability and refugee status. Esther also led the redesign of more than 35 underperforming programs across seven African countries, significantly strengthening inclusion outcomes. These reforms contributed to a major increase in results—from 2 million young women reached in 2023 to 11.9 million by the end of 2025.
During her tenure, Esther also spearheaded major financing and programmatic initiatives, including the redesign of a $782 million livelihoods initiative expanding education and economic opportunities for young women in marginalized communities, the design of a $200 million equity facility supporting women fund managers and entrepreneurs, and a $47 million program helping young entrepreneurs transition from the informal to the formal economy. She also supported the rollout of a $500 million community health worker program creating employment opportunities for women while strengthening access to healthcare.
Prior to this role, Esther served as Manager of the Affirmative Finance Action for Women in Africa (AFAWA) at the African Development Bank, where she helped mobilize $1.2 billion in financing to expand access to capital for more than 3,500 women-owned SMEs and launched a skills acceleration program reaching 16,000 women entrepreneurs in 20 countries.
Earlier in her career, Esther held several leadership roles at the International Finance Corporation (IFC), where she led global initiatives on women’s access to finance and insurance markets. She holds an MBA from Strayer University and a Bachelor’s degree in International Studies from Miami University (Ohio) and has completed executive programs at Oxford, Wharton, and Harvard. She was recognized by CIO Magazine as one of the Top 10 Business Leaders to Follow in 2025.