Charlene Chen

Biography

Charlene loves being an "extrapreneur" connecting, mentoring, advising, and investing in entrepreneurs, intrepreneurs, and social enterprises. She has 20 years of private sector and social sector experience working with organizations ranging from tech startup/scaleups to international non-profits to Fortune 500 companies. Charlene began her career as an IT consultant at Deloitte Consulting, but after earning an MBA at UC Berkeley's Haas School of Business, moved to East Africa to work with non-profits improving the livelihoods of smallholder farmers (KickStart and TechnoServe). For 8 years, she served as the COO of socially impactful venture-capital backed businesses in the fintech and healthtech industries, and co-founded a global community of COOs and operations professionals called Operations Nation. Charlene is thrilled to bring all this "doer" experience to leading Ezrah Charitable Trust, a private family foundation focused on economic and technology development across Africa.