Our People

Biography

As Vice President of Policy Programs, Peggy provides strategic oversight and guidance to the Institute’s 26 policy programs. As Executive Director of Aspen Global Health and Development, Peggy leads programs promoting breakthrough approaches to global development including the Ministerial Leadership Initiative, a five-year program designed to build the capacity of ministries of health in Mali, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Ethiopia, and Nepal; the Health Worker Migration Initiative and its high level Global Policy Advisory Council, which led the adoption of the historic WHO Global Code of Practice; The Global Leaders Council for Reproductive Health, composed of sitting and former heads of state and other leaders dedicated to asserting the centrality of reproductive health to development; and Transfarm Africa, which is pioneering new approaches to agricultural development and trade in Africa. 

Previously, Peggy was the founding Managing Director of Realizing Rights, led by Mary Robinson, former President of Ireland, providing overall strategic, financial, and management direction. From 2001 to 2003, Peggy was the Executive Vice President for Policy Programs and Seminars of the Aspen Institute, where she managed all programmatic and leadership divisions of the Institute. In 1991, Peggy founded the Self-Employment Learning Project, later named the Economic Opportunities Program, which she led for ten years at the Aspen Institute, addressing poverty and workforce strategies in the U.S.  Peggy helped to define and found the new field of "Sectoral Workforce Development" with the publication Jobs and the Urban Poor. Prior to that, Peggy was a Program Officer at the Ford Foundation and the first Director of Small Scale Enterprise and Credit at Save the Children. Peggy was a leader in founding and shaping the microfinance field internationally, helping to draft the first microenterprise legislation for USAID and serving on the first Microenterprise Advisory Council to the Administrator of USAID. Peggy also led efforts to establish the microfinance field in the US creating the first national evaluation and documentation of the microenterprise field and helping to develop the first SBA legislation to support the field. For this work, Peggy received the Inaugural Presidential Award for Excellence in Microenterprise Development from President Bill Clinton in 1995. Peggy is the author of numerous publications on poverty, global health, international development, workforce strategies, and microenterprise.