Jason Wendle

Jason has 20 years of strategy and build experience in the social impact space. As a Managing Director at GDI Americas, he oversees the People on the Move portfolio of initiatives, which span across labor mobility, refugee economic inclusion, and combatting human trafficking. He plays the lead strategy role at Labor Mobility Partnerships (LaMP), having previously done so for the Global Fund to End Modern Slavery (GFEMS). Jason is guiding LaMP to turn a world-changing idea into concrete demonstrations supported by a robust and adaptive organization. He helped develop GFEMS’ strategy to deploy $80M to transform systems of slavery in high-prevalence sectors and grow the evidence base for the field. When he joined GDI, Jason launched and directed the Mastercard Foundation Rural and Agricultural Finance Learning Lab, one of GDI’s efforts to define and shape the smallholder finance sector.

Before GDI, Jason helped establish and build the Nairobi office of Dalberg and its evaluation practice on the continent. Over seven years, he advised the world’s largest private foundations, donor countries, international institutions, African governments, Fortune 100 firms, and upstart innovators on achieving greater impact in agriculture, energy, technology, finance and investment, economic growth, and poverty reduction.

Jason serves on the boards of Jibu, Justice Rising, and LaMP, and founded and led a church early in his career. He holds an MPA/ID from Harvard’s Kennedy School and has published and presented on migration, modern slavery, agricultural finance, impact investment, and impact measurement. Jason enjoys taking people, especially his kids, on outdoor adventures they didn’t know they needed.