Clare WOODCRAFT

Executive Director

Clare Woodcraft is Executive Director at the ESSEC Philanthropy Chair. She is in charge of operations, partnership relations and development, at the crossroads of the academic and the practitioners' worlds of philanthropy.

With over 25 years of experience as an executive and director in the philanthropic sector, Clare is an expert in strategic models based on risk-taking, catalytic financing and capacity-building.

A graduate of the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), she is trilingual (Arabic, English, French).

During her career, she has held senior positions in several international foundations, including the Shell Foundation (2007-2011) and the Emirates Foundations - which she led from 2011 to 2017. She then headed the Centre for Strategic Philanthropy at the Judge Business School - University of Cambridge from 2020 to 2023, before joining the Philanthropy Chair at ESSEC.

At the same time, and to this day, she advises and supports institutional and individual philanthropists, notably as a member of various boards: WINGS (until 2023), Fondation Chanel, Mindshift Capital, Sumerian Foundation, University of Cambridge, Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership (CISL), London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), United Arab Emirates University, and Alliance Magazine.

A fervent advocate of strategic philanthropy in the global South, Clare also co-edited, with Kamal Munir and Nitya Mohan Khemka, the book Reimagining Philanthropy in the Global South: From Analysis to Action in a Post-COVID World, published in 2024.