Analisa Leonor Balares

Analisa Leonor Balares is an emerging global leader dedicated to unleashing womens potential, and advancing the evolution of women as leaders and innovators around the world. She is a community builder, social innovator, global entrepreneur, and mentor. For over two decades, she has been committed to womens leadership development, sustainable development, entrepreneurship, innovation, and education, and has produced, directed, and co-produced over 100 summits, forums, and media on these themes.

In February 2008, Analisa created and launched Womensphere, a unique leadership community and global social enterprise that convenes, mobilizes, and creates platforms for action - uniting individuals, companies, networks, academic institutions, and NGOs, around the shared purpose of unleashing women's potential and enabling the evolution of women as leaders, innovators and creators in our global society. The Womensphere global leadership community inspires, connects, and empowers women leaders, innovators, entrepreneurs, policymakers, scientists, artists, financiers, and pioneering women across all fields. Since its founding, Womensphere has reached, convened and connected over 3,500 leaders through 22 conferences, forums, and media in the United States and Europe.

Analisa was recently recognized as a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum. She was also recently honored as an Outstanding Woman Leader by the National Council for Research on Women, with the Madam C.J. Walker Leadership Award by the National Minority Business Council, and Fearless Woman of the Year by The Fearless Factor in New York City. She was also honored by the US Filipina Womens Network as one of the 100 Most Influential Filipinas in America, by UNO Magazine as one of the 50 Most Powerful Filipinas in the World, and by The New Leaders Council as one of its 40 Under 40 New Leaders in America.

Analisa holds an MBA from Harvard Business School; a BA in Economics & Mathematics cum laude from Mount Holyoke College; and the International Baccalaureate Diploma from Lester Pearson United World College in Canada, as a Scholar of the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) and the Ayala Foundation. She studied Digital Filmmaking at the New York Film Academy, and is a silver medalist from the Manila Science High School.

Prior to Womensphere, Analisa was Global Marketing and Product Manager at Microsoft focused on MSN's blogging and social networking service. She has previously worked at the Goldman Sachs High Technology Investment Banking group, where she helped execute over $1.5 billion in IPOs, corporate financings, and mergers and acquisitions for technology and communications companies such as Red Hat and Nokia. Following Goldman Sachs, Analisa joined Milestone Capital as Director of Development & New Ventures where she worked with Milestone CEO Janet Hanson on developing the 85 Broads global network and platform. Analisa has also worked at Morgan Stanley's Energy Investment Banking group as part of the Sponsors for Educational Opportunity (SEO) Career Program, and in Economic Research and Analysis at the World Trade Organization (WTO) in Geneva as part of a Mount Holyoke College international fellowship.

Analisas journey to make a positive impact and help create the future started very early, and continues to span the globe:

While at the Manila Science High School, Analisa led innovative experiments, research and prototype development on biofuels, recycling, and pollution mitigation a body of work that earned her and her team multiple national awards from the Philippine Department of Science and Technology (DOST) and Philippine Shell Foundation over three years - Outstanding Junior Scientist, Outstanding Youth Science Researcher, and the DOST Appropriate Technology Award. She represented the Philippines in International Science Fairs in Asia, and was a recognized national youth spokesperson on issues of girls leadership, youth empowerment, innovation, and sustainability.

In addition, as a high school senior, Analisa was chosen to serve as Youth Mayor of the City of Manila, and elected Senate President of the inaugural Philippine Youth Environment Congress where she led drafting the Philippine youths public policy recommendations for the inaugural UN Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro.

Today, in addition to building Womensphere globally, Analisa actively contributes to the community by supporting a select group of NGOs led by women or serving women (such as Advancement for Rural Kids, Global Fund for Women, Global Fund for Widows, Indego Africa, Philippine Development Foundation/Ayala Foundation, Shining Hope for Communities, Womens Refugee Commission, and more). She serves as a Mentor for Sponsors for Educational Opportunity, and serves on the Advisory Councils of the Asian Womens Leadership University Project, and the Polaris Project, a leading NGO combating all forms of human trafficking. She also serves on the World Economic Forum Young Global Leaders' Task Force on Closing the Gender Gap. She is a co-creator of the Womensphere-Mary J. Blige Foundation for the Advancement of Women Now (FFAWN) Mentoring Program.