Sarah Burch has over a decade of experience in financing and scaling emerging market startups. She is a managing director at Rippleworks, a nonprofit foundation that helps social enterprises scale by offering access to operating expertise and resources. As part of the executive team, Burch leads operations and strategic planning for Rippleworks, including using impact data and systems to make more effective, data-informed decisions.
Since Burch joined Rippleworks in 2015 as a founding team member, she has held multiple roles through which she has helped scale the organization to a team of more than 40 people that has helped over 300 social enterprises worldwide, deployed over US$80 million in funding and developed more than 1,000 leaders.
Burch began her career at the U.S. Agency for International Development, initially as special assistant to the agency’s first chief innovation officer and later as a portfolio manager and investment officer in Development Innovation Ventures (DIV), which she helped launch in 2010. The first of its kind, DIV is an early-stage innovation fund that has invested over US$200 million across nearly 200 grants in over 50 countries and inspired the creation of similar funds, including the Global Innovation Fund.
Burch holds a bachelor’s degree in political science from the University of Notre Dame. She is a Kauffman Fellow (Class 25), the largest network of venture capitalists and innovation leaders in the world.
Burch joined the FHI 360 board of directors in January 2024.
