Elias Habbar-Baylac

Venture Capital Fellow, Third Sphere
Entrepreneurial Finance Fellow, Berkeley Haas School of Business

Elias Habbar-Baylac is a Venture Capital Fellow at Third Sphere, a Fellow at the Berkeley Center for Equity, Gender & Leadership, and an Entrepreneurial Finance Fellow at the Berkeley Haas School of Business. Elias is a gender finance and inclusive innovation professional, experienced as a strategist & investor in sustainable development & economic inclusion across direct deals & as LP, with a focus on opportunity, gender & diversity-lens investing, ESG, climate & sustainability, & financial services. Elias has worked at British International Investment as chief of staff to the MD for financial inclusion and gender and diversity finance specialist. He advised gender-lens investments in Africa and Asia, developed solutions to drive women’s access to finance and entrepreneurship, launched a global task force for gender-equitable climate finance, and delivered strategies on issues like LGBTQ investing and gender-based violence.

Elias has also worked as an impact specialist and gender and economic inclusion economist with the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and as a strategic partnerships champion at the United Nations Development Program. He has served as co-head of two LGBTQ networks, launched initiatives for men to champion gender equity in the workplace, and mentored women entrepreneurs and under-represented students. Elias is a cum laude graduate of Columbia University and Sciences Po Paris, an alumnus of the Max Planck Society, and a recipient of the 2016 Prize of France’s Marcel Bleustein-Blanchet Foundation.