Biography

Daniella Ballou-Aares

Daniella Ballou-Aares

Director
Daniella Ballou-Aares has served as a member of our board since March 2018. Daniella is the CEO and Co-Founder of the Leadership Now Project, a national membership organization of business and thought leaders committed to renewing American democracy. Daniella began her career at one of the top global management consulting firms, Bain & Company, working across the firm’s offices in the US, South Africa, and the UK. From there, she became a founding Partner at Dalberg, where she led the Americas business and transformed it from a seven-person startup to the largest global social impact strategy firm with 25 offices across Africa, Asia, Latin America, Europe, and the US. Daniella then spent five years in the Obama Administration as the Senior Advisor for Development to the Secretary of State, serving under Secretaries Clinton and Kerry. She was instrumental to negotiating the 192-country agreement on the Sustainable Development Goals and reorienting the $10 billion US government global HIV initiative toward data-driven programming. Daniella’s perspectives have been featured in the Harvard Business Review, The New York Times, Fast Company, POLITICO, and at the World Economic Forum, among others. Daniella is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and was a 2014 World Economic Forum Young Global Leader. She holds an MBA from Harvard Business School, an MPA from the Harvard Kennedy School and graduated cum laude from Cornell with a BS in Operations Research and Industrial Engineering. Daniella lives in New York City with her husband and two daughters.