Marissa Wesely
Marissa Wesely is the Co-founder of Win-Win Strategies (WWS), which was founded to connect the power of business with the deep assets of women’s funds and local women’s organizations to build women’s economic resilience globally. She is an advisor to Women Win with which WWS merged in 2019. Prior to the merger, Marissa was the Chief Executive Officer of WWS.
Marissa was a 2014 Fellow at Harvard’s Advanced Leadership Initiative and a Global Fellow at the Wilson Center, affiliated with the Center’s Global Women’s Leadership Initiative. She was on the Board of Directors of Root Capital, the Canadian Equality Fund, and was formally on the Board of the Global Fund for Women. Marissa is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and speaks and writes regularly on issues of women’s empowerment and rights, including as the co-author of the 2015 cover story in the Stanford Social Innovation Review, “Empowering Women at the Grassroots”, and the 2018 SSIR blog, “Three Ways Businesses Can Improve Their Women’s Economic Empowerment Programs.” She and colleagues at Women Win were key partners in designing and launching the Resilience Fund for Women in Global Value Chains, on whose Advisory Board she now serves.
Prior to 2014, Marissa was a partner in the global law firm Simpson Thacher & Bartlett LLP and was regularly recognized as a leading lawyer in banking and finance. A longstanding advocate for women and girls, Marissa has received many awards recognizing this work, including the American Bar Association’s Margaret Brent Award. Marissa is a graduate of Williams College and Harvard Law School. She lives in New York City with her husband and has one daughter who is the Cartoon Editor of The New Yorker.