Alice Albright CEO, Global Partnership for Education
From July 2009 until January 2013, she served in the Obama Administration as the Executive Vice President & Chief Operating Officer of the Export-Import Bank of the United States (Ex-Im Bank).
During Ms. Albright’s tenure at Ex-Im, the Bank recorded three consecutive years of record-breaking authorizations. This culminated in Fiscal Year 2012 when the Bank authorized nearly $35.8 billion in financing, which supported more than 255,000 American jobs. In the past five years (from Fiscal Year 2008), Ex-Im Bank has earned for U.S. taxpayers nearly $1.6 billion above the cost of operations. While in that position, she led a significant expansion of Ex-Im operations in response to the current financial and economic crisis. Ms. Albright also launched a number of initiatives to modernize Ex-Im and extend its reach to underserved businesses and markets.
Her previous experience includes serving as the Chief Financial and Investment Officer for the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunizations (GAVI) from 2001 to 2009 and from 2003, as the head of GAVI's Washington, DC office. Working closely with GAVI’s partners, many which are also involved with the Global Partnership for Education, she developed and implemented the strategy that transformed GAVI from a start-up to one of the most successful and respected public-private partnerships working in international development. Ms. Albright led GAVI’s innovative finance program which enhanced the delivery and financing of vaccines and immunization services in the world’s poorest countries. From 1985 to 2001, Ms. Albright worked as a banker with a focus on emerging markets and held positions at the Carlyle Group, JP Morgan, Bankers Trust Company and Citicorp.
The Global Partnership for Education is made up of nearly 60 developing country governments, as well as other donor governments, civil society organizations/NGOs, teacher organizations, international organizations, and private sector organizations and foundations, whose joint mission is to galvanize and coordinate a global effort to provide a good quality education to children, prioritizing the poorest and most vulnerable.
Since its inception in 2002, GPE has helped its developing country partners increase the percentage of children completing primary school from 56 to 71 percent, reduce the percentage of out-of-school primary school-aged children from 34 to 18 percent, and increase literacy rates particularly for young women, while committing over US$2.6 billion in financial assistance since 2004.