Alyse Nelson

A cofounder of Vital Voices, Alyse has worked for the organization for more than 26 years, serving as vice president and senior director of programs before assuming her current role in 2009. Under her leadership, Vital Voices has expanded its reach to serve over 20,000 women leaders across 186 countries and territories.

Previously, Alyse served as deputy director of the State Department’s Vital Voices Global Democracy Initiative and worked with the President’s Interagency Council on Women at the White House.

Alyse is a regular speaker on leadership and global women’s issues. She has spoken before the United Nations General Assembly, the Clinton Global Initiative, Fortune Most Powerful Women, Oxford Student Union, Forbes 30/50 and Women in the World, among others. She has conducted leadership training with women at the Central Intelligence Agency, DFID, the UK Development Agency, Fortune 1000 companies and at numerous conferences.

Alyse is a Member of the Council on Foreign Relations and served as an official Observer for the World Bank’s We-fi Initiative for Women Entrepreneurs. She serves on advisory boards of Chime for Change and Global Citizen. Fortune Magazine named Alyse one of the 55 Most Influential Women on Twitter and she was featured as one of Newsweek’s 150 Women Shaking the World.

Alyse was also honored in 2015 with a Tribeca Disruptive Innovation Award and in 2018 Apolitical named her one of the most influential people in global gender policy. She is a recipient of the 2022 David Rockefeller Bridging Leadership Award.

Alyse is the author of the best-selling book Vital Voices: The Power of Women Leading Change Around the World and the editor of Vital Voices: 100 Women Using Their Power to Empower. She has been featured in various international and national media.

She holds a BA from Emerson College and an MA from The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University.