Ms. Almaz Negash is the Founder and the Executive Director of the African Diaspora Network (A.D.N.). In 2010, she founded A.D.N. to inform and engage Africans in the diaspora to facilitate direct collaboration with social entrepreneurs, innovators, and business leaders to invest and improve the lives of everyone on the continent. Under her leadership and vision, A.D.N. is now the home of The African Diaspora Investment Symposium (A.D.I.S.), a marketplace for investors and entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley.

Valley Women of Influence for her social innovation work. She serves as the Senior Managing Director of Step-Up Silicon Valley, a social innovation network utilizing disruptive, research-based strategies to reduce poverty and increase economic opportunity in Silicon Valley.

One of her contributions to community economic developments includes her leadership in the exploration and incubation of Pay for Success (aka Social Impact Bond), a new model of social innovation financing that resulted in reducing homelessness in Santa Clara County. Before founding A.D.N., Almaz was a member of the U.N. Economic Commission for Africa, where she contributed to the High-Level Panel on Migration (2017-2019).

She was recently honored by her selection as a 2022 Fellowship candidate at Stanford University. She is a frequent speaker on regional and global development, authored several articles, and serves on many organizational, corporate, and advisory boards.

Almaz holds an M.B.A. from Golden Gate University and a B.A. from the University of San Francisco and is a loving wife and proud mother of two children.