The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation announced today that Sarah Iqbal has joined the foundation’s Global Development and Population Program. Dana Hovig, director of the program, shared the following with grantees and foundation staff:
Sarah Iqbal joins us as a program officer for the Global Development and Population Program’s Women’s Economic Empowerment portfolio. Sarah comes to us from the World Bank Group where she managed Women, Business and the Law, the World Bank’s flagship report that analyzes laws and regulations that affect women’s economic participation in 190 economies around the world. While there, she produced indicators highlighting constraints to women getting jobs and starting businesses. She also provided guidance to policymakers on women’s employment, entrepreneurship, and financial inclusion and helped ensure advocacy organizations could use Women, Business and the Law’s data and analysis in their own efforts.
Our Women’s Economic Empowerment strategy aims to ensure women have full and fair opportunities to earn a living and control their assets and includes support to organizations making women’s work—including unpaid and informal work—visible in gender data and integral to economic policymaking. This portfolio has grown in recent years and Sarah will be our first full-time program officer dedicated to the work. Sarah will manage several of our Women’s Economic Empowerment grants and lead the Women’s Economic Empowerment strategy refresh process, aiming to bring a revised strategy to the Hewlett Board of Directors in 2021. Sarah will work closely with Alfonsina Peñaloza, Norma Altshuler, Althea Anderson, May Aguiar, Kim Brehm, and Jessica Avendaño who also spend part of their time on our Women’s Economic Empowerment portfolio.
We hope you will join us in welcoming Sarah to the Hewlett Foundation and back to her home state of California.