Brenda Bowman

Brenda Bowman is a specialist on gender diversity, inclusive leadership, governance and value creation on boards of directors.  She has worked with the International Finance Corporation (IFC) since 2007. She is currently the lead course designer and facilitator for the IFC’s Women on Boards and in Business Leadership program.  

Brenda’s trademark areas of expertise include using Emotional and Social Intelligence to develop strategies for gender diversity that boost Environment, Social and Governance (ESG) performance and sustainability; experiential and transformational learning and program design in the corporate world; corporate governance in emerging and frontier markets; and the dynamics of unconscious bias in the board room and in C-suites.

Brenda has lead conferences, corporate retreats and Training of Trainers workshops for bankers, entrepreneurs, leaders of Non-Government Organizations, government officials, corporate executives and boards of directors in Africa, Latin America, South-East Asia and the Middle East. 

She has directed capacity building programs in Africa for USAID, UNDP and the United States Peace Corps, specializing in organizational development and program management and evaluation. 

She is author of the IFC’s Board Leadership and Training Resource Kit for the Nigerian Banking Sector; the Board Leadership and Training Resource Kit for Board Directors in Malawi; and the Corporate Secretary’s Toolkit. 

She holds a Bachelor of Education (B.Ed.) degree from Makerere University in Uganda and a Master’s in Applied Linguistics (M.Sc.) from Edinburgh University, Scotland.