Director of Special ProjectsBlum Center for Developing Economies
Heather Kinlaw Lofthouse is the Director of Special Projects at the Blum Center for Developing Economies at UC Berkeley. She supports the operation and growth of the Center, including the USAID-funded Development Impact Lab and the Blum Center’s expansion to all 10 University of California campuses. She also works with academic, NGO, and social enterprise partners to establish novel research collaborations to better understand the behavior of those at the bottom of the economic pyramid and to facilitate the adoption and scale-up of promising innovations. Heather recently served as the founding Managing Director for Inequality Media, a new non-profit focused on short-form digital content about the political economy founded by Former Secretary of Labor, Robert Reich, and Emmy-award winning documentarian, Jacob Kornbluth. Previously, Heather developed health and education programs for children in the US and Latin America as Managing Director of Absolute Return for Kids US. She also managed and contributed to a body of research on social franchising for health in Africa and South Asia while serving as Program Manager for the Private Sector Healthcare Initiative at UCSF’s Global Health Group. Her work focused on using formal networks to upskill and improve health delivery quality amongst microentrepreneurs in Bangladesh, Ghana, and Kenya. She has a Master’s in Public Policy and a Master’s in Public Health from UC Berkeley and a BA in Philosophy and Religion (Islamic focus) from George Washington University. Heather serves on the Board of Advisors for Inequality Media.