An investment banker turned social impact innovator, Ayesha Vera-Yu is the CEO and Co-Founder of ARK Solves (arksolves.org), the award-winning social impact venture that creates a path with rural communities in the developing world to co-invest towards self-sustainable food security. Since the pandemic, ARK has grown 25x in scale, and grown the equivalent of close to 4 million meals for 138,000 individuals..

In addition to being a solution maker, Ayesha is a future maker. Through ARK, she is creating a new path in the world that is catalytic and not colonistic. She truly believes in the agency, brilliance, and innovation of her rural partners who have been overlooked or perceived as dependent “beneficiaries”. With them, Ayesha sources and designs solutions from within, that communities invest in and execute, and that create a near-term exit for catalytic investors.

Prior to ARK, Ayesha was the youngest director and business team leader at BNP Paribas, one of the world’s largest investment banks, structuring cross-border multi-billion dollar debt financings and acquisitions. She holds a BA Biology and Chemistry degree from Mt. Holyoke College and an Executive MBA from Columbia University.

Ayesha has also been recognized by the World Economic Forum as a Young Global Leader (2014), an Ashoka Fellow (2021), and has been selected to be part of Facebook’s Accelerator program, Morgan Stanley’s Strategy Challenge program, WEF-Oxford University’s Transformational Leadership program, and Earth Company’s Impact Hero program. ARK has been awarded and recognized by the Asian Development Bank and UNDP.