Pollination Senior Advisor Elizabeth Littlefield named as one of Reuters Impact’s trailblazing women leading the fight against climate change

With so many extraordinary women engaged in the battle against climate change, the biggest task in compiling Reuters Impact’s list of trailblazing women for International Women’s Day was whittling down our long list to only 25. We reluctantly decided not to include the likes of Christiana Figueres, Greta Thunberg, and U.N. Environment Programme chief Inger Andersen, who already have a high global profile for their work, in order to shine the light on women whose contributions may have flown under the radar. Pollination Senior Advisor was named as one of the Trailblazers in Finance.

Elizabeth Littlefield has brought decades of expertise in the finance and insurance industry to support private investment in the developing world. At West Africa Blue she is working with communities to preserve, restore and sustainably manage large-scale coastal ecosystems across West Africa, financed through the issuance of high- quality carbon credits.

Previously she headed up the US Development Finance Corporation (formerly OPIC), where she managed its $24 billion portfolio to support private investment in more than 100 developing countries.

From 2000 until 2010, Littlefield was a director at the World Bank and the CEO of the Consultative Group to Assist the Poor (CGAP), the global policy and advisory partnership charged with building and professionalising the microfinance/inclusive finance sector. Littlefield currently chairs the board of M-Kopa, a leading pay-as-you-go solar company in Africa and also serves on the boards of World Wildlife Fund and numerous other conservation and environmental institutions.