Amanda Ellis

Amanda Ellis currently serves as Executive Director Hawaii & Asia-Pacific, & Global Director for Strategic Partnerships, for the ASU Julie Ann Wrigley Global Institute of Sustainability. She was most recently New Zealand Ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva and Prime Minister's Special Envoy, playing a key role in New Zealand's successful UN Security Council bid.

Prior to that, as Deputy Secretary (International Development) in the NZ Foreign Ministry Ms Ellis was first woman to lead the Aid Programme, managing an annual budget of $0.6 billion. With a long history working to promote gender equality, Ms Ellis held a number of senior roles at the World Bank Group, where she served as Lead Specialist Gender, managed the President's Global Private Sector CEO Leaders Forum, founded the International Finance Corporation global gender group and led the Doing Business gender research project which created “Women, Business and the Law.” Ms Ellis previously started and led Westpac Banking Corporation’s Women’s Markets and national Women in Business initiatives, with her team scaling up to $0.5 billion in annual revenues in just three years.

Ms Ellis serves on the advisory boards of Hawaii Green Growth (the first island and Asia-Pacific UN Local2030 hub promoting the UN SDGs), Bishop Museum, the Institute for Climate and Peace, the East-West Center, the Council on Foreign Relations and the UN Women’s Empowerment Principles. As co-chair of the WE Empower UN SDG Challenge (to promote women business owners globally who are both running successful businesses and supporting the UN Sustainable Development Goals), Ms Ellis launched the UN Global Compact’s new Target Gender Equality campaign at the United Nations in September 2019.

The author of two best selling Random House business books and five titles in the World Bank Directions in Development series on gender and growth, Ms Ellis was most recently a contributing author to the HRD 2018 Book of the Year on Leadership and Power in International Development: Navigating the intersections of gender, culture, context and sustainability.

A founding member of the Global Banking Alliance for Women, Ms Ellis is the proud recipient of The International Alliance for Women Lifetime Achievement Award for supporting women’s economic empowerment, a subject she continues to be passionate about!