Jessica Schnabel is the Global Head of IFC’s Banking on Women business. With over 25 years of experience in emerging markets finance, she is responsible for building IFC’s investment and advisory pipeline and portfolio with financial institutions in emerging markets, in order to radically scale-up and improve financial services for women and women-led MSMEs. In this role, she has led her team to invest more than US$10 billion and deliver solutions to over 300 financial institution clients in 83 countries to build profitable financial solutions for women customers across multiple segments. Building partnerships with public and private-sector organizations, IFC’s Banking on Women business has been at the forefront of innovations such as the Banking on Women-Global Trade Finance Program, the Gender Bond, the Housing Finance for Women initiative, the BOW Working Capital Solutions Initiative, and generating action-oriented data analytics to achieve tangible financial and development results. Her prior experience focused on investment and advisory services including a range of debt, equity, and balance sheet risk-management investments in commercial banks, private equity funds, and asset finance companies in emerging markets. Ms. Schnabel holds a bachelor’s degree from Indiana University and a master’s degree from the School for Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University, and in 2025 recently completed coursework at Columbia University on capital markets.
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