Mary Abad is a finance professional passionate about using her skills to make lasting, positive change. Mary has over 15 years’ experience in banking and international development. She was an Investment Officer for the Asian Development Bank (ADB), where she led private sector investments and provided post-funding support to over $1 billion in investments aimed at fighting poverty and fostering broad-based growth. Specifically, Mary financed water, renewable energy, and road projects, and developed programs with local banks across Asia to increase their lending to small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Mary expanded ADB’s award-winning Trade Finance Program in 8 countries, managing a portfolio of $700 million in guarantee exposure to more than 30 banks that generated $2bn in global trade annually, much of it supporting exports from SMEs. Mary also helped establish the first infrastructure private equity fund for the Philippines. Earlier in her career, Mary led and supported transactions and relationships for global banks (Citi Corporate and Investment Bank, GE Capital) in bank, bond and private equity finance. Now back in her native Southern California, she works for a community bank and participates in ad-hoc projects for Living Economy Advisors. LEA strives to create systemic change for a better world by applying innovative funding tools and models that meet the needs of investors and set regenerative economy projects up for success and scale. Mary was appointed by the Mayor to be a Member of the International Affairs Board for the City of San Diego. She also serves on the Boards of the San Diego World Affairs Council, Slow Money SoCal, and the Advisory Board for Self-Help Federal Credit Union. Mary has degrees from Stanford, Johns Hopkins SAIS, and Columbia Business School. In her free time she enjoys spending time with family and friends, travel, hiking, scuba diving and salsa dancing.
