About

Nozomi is Executive Director at Leap Philanthropy Ltd.  LEAP is a Singapore based venture philanthropy organisation, working towards lifting low-income rural households above the poverty line in a sustainable way. LEAP does this by supporting and investing in social enterprises in Southeast Asia, in sectors such as Agriculture, Energy & Water, and Financial Inclusion.  LEAP started in 2012 and occupies the space between traditional charitable giving and impact investing. LEAP?s mission is to empower the poor to break out of the aid dependence & poverty cycle, and to leap above the poverty line of US$2 per day.

At Water.org, Nozomi led multiple country teams to design and implement innovative market-based solutions, develop scaling strategy, and solve global challenges of access to water and sanitation finance.  

At the World Bank based in Washington D.C, Nozomi led and managed multi-million dollar poverty alleviation, microfinance, digital finance, and SME development projects in Africa. Led process of project designing, negotiation, implementation and M&E while managing budget, donor and client-relations.

A truly global citizen, Nozomi is a Japanese national who lives in Singapore now. She grew up in Iraq and Tanzania, before working in the US for over a decade.  

She holds a Executive MBA Degree from INSEAD?19 and Master?s Degree in International Development (Brandeis University, Massachusetts, USA).