K. Shelly Porges serves as the National Finance Co-Chair for the Ready for Hillary PAC, a grassroots effort to encourage Hillary Clinton to run for President in 2016. She is also a global strategy and marketing expert focused on entrepreneurship, partnerships and busi-ness development for several non-profit and for-profit organizations, including serving as the President of the North American Jury for the Cartier Women’s Initiative Awards, on the Advisory Board for Global Entrepreneurship Week, as an Entrepreneur-in-Residence at Georgetown University as well as on several early-stage company boards.
She is the former Senior Advisor, Global Entrepreneurship Program (GEP) at the U.S. State Department where she expanded GEP to almost 150 countries, as part of Secretary Clinton’s Economic Statecraft policy initiative. Prior to joining GEP, she launched the State Department’s Global Women’s Business Initiative working through multi-lateral relationships to promote women’s entrepreneurship worldwide. Before joining the State Department, she had a distinguished career in the private sector and is a recognized mar-keting and strategy expert having launched products, brands and companies, as well as raised funds for a range of non-profit and political organizations.
Ms. Porges’ career includes both corporate and entrepreneurial ventures. She ended her ten-year stint at American Express as executive head of marketing for American Express Canada, followed by 3 years as chief retail marketing officer for Bank of America during a historic turn-around. Ms. Porges founded or co-founded a number of start-up ventures including one sold to Wachovia Bank; Third Age Media, the leading Internet portal for baby boomers; and Scudder Weisel Capital LLC, a joint venture between Thomas Weisel Partners and Zurich Scudder Investments, one of the largest asset managers in the world. She also co-founded and was managing partner for Global Payments Experts LLC.
Ms. Porges advises many organizations including serving on the Economic Advisory Council for the President of Cyprus, Meridian International’s Global Leadership Institute and three early stage companies, StartUp Cup, a global network of accelerator programs; Tiatros, a medical solutions platform; and Distributed Sun, a commercial solar company. As a recognized expert on entrepreneurship and women’s leadership, she has spoken at events all over the world from Asia to Europe to MENA to Latin America and to the U.S.
Ms. Porges holds both a BS and MPS degree from Cornell University.
