Mr. Rodger Voorhies
Executive Director, Global Growth and Opportunity, The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation
Rodger Voorhies is President of the Global Growth & Opportunity Division and a member of the Executive Leadership Team at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation reporting to the CEO. Rodger oversees the Agricultural Development, Financial Services for the Poor, Gender, and Water, Sanitation and Hygiene programs within the foundation. Prior to his current role, Rodger was director of the foundation’s Financial Services for the Poor program where he refocused the strategy to harness digital platforms to lower the cost of reaching lower-income households. In sub-Saharan Africa and Eastern Europe, he established and grew licensed microfinance banks that delivered financial services to SMEs, farmers, poor households and communities. He was CEO of Opportunity Bank of Serbia, and he founded Opportunity Bank of Malawi. He was a postgraduate student in Organizational Behavior and Sociology at Northwestern University, and he holds a Master’s degree in Management from Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern and a Bachelor of Science degree from Biola University.