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Heidi Hafes

Team Member

Heidi Hafes

Business Director: Solutions for Women and Marginalised Groups

Heidi leads Shell Foundation’s DE&I strategy across the organisation and serves as a permanent member of our investment committee and is currently on parental leave.

As part of SF’s 2023-2027 strategy, Heidi transformed the level of our ambition and commitment to impact women and marginalised groups. She is now responsible for; building SF’s organisational capacity to deliver against our targets; embedding a DE&I lens into decision-making and processes; and building commercially viable solution that will enable millions of women and marginalised consumers to earn a living income.

Heidi has spent several years at SF building innovative and commercial solutions to improve the lives of low-income women across Africa and India. These include; pioneering ‘Business First Approach to Gender-Inclusion’; establishing the POWERED Programme in India; and partnering with investors to create new financial products and vehicles that incentivise better outcomes for women.  Her leadership on these topics has positioned SF as pioneers of ‘gender-inclusion’ in the distributed renewable energy sector.

Heidi was co-lead for the gender technical assistance working group for 2X global and is also a member of taskforce developing a go-to-market strategy for W+ Standard a ‘gender credit’. Previous to this role, Heidi held the role as Market Development Manager, and led our research and learning programme, where she supported the publication and dissemination of 50+ research and learning publications. She also led our in-country energy market building ‘accelerator programmes’ in Nigeria and Ethiopia and provided strategic marketing consultancy to CEO’s of SF’s portfolio.

Before joining Shell Foundation, Heidi worked in a wide range of business and marketing roles in commercial and not-for-profit organisations. Heidi graduated from the University in Kent with a degree in Law and has international business experience working in China, USA, across Africa and the Middle East.