Elizabeth Scharpf is an inventor, entrepreneur, and investor who brings the best ideas to market by wearing what ever hat fits the occasion. Scharpf is currently Founder and CEO of Sustainable Health Enterprises (SHE), a social venture that invests in people and ideas that are overlooked, often times taboo, but can have a huge social and economic impact. SHE’s first initiative is SHE28 which addresses girls' and women's lack of access to affordable menstrual pads in Africa, Asia, and South America causing them to miss school and/or work. SHE is currently helping women roll out a franchise model in Rwanda manufacturing and distributing affordable, eco-friendly menstrual pads by sourcing local, inexpensive raw materials (e.g., banana fibers). Most recently, Pulitzer Prize New York Times winner Nick Kristof featured Scharpf and SHE in his last book, following recognition from Harvard Business School, Echoing Green, MIT IDEAS, the Clinton Global Initiative, UNESCO, Buckminster Fuller Challenge and Stanford Social Ventures, among others.
Prior to SHE, Scharpf was starting up other ventures and advising businesses on growth strategies around the world at Cambridge Pharma Consultancy, the Clinton Foundation, and the World Bank. Scharpf is a Fulbright Scholar, has an MBA and MPA-International Development from Harvard and a BA from the University of Notre Dame. Despite all the academic acronyms, she thinks her best education has come from talking with those sitting next to her on buses around the world.