Claudia Schwartz is Power Africa’s sector lead for the distributed solar sector, managing the initiative’s partnerships across off-grid solar and productive use of energy. She provides subject matter expertise on issues in the sector, provides technical oversight to large-scale funding agreements and helps to design new funding programs. She co-leads the initiative’s climate working group and the Smart Communities Coalition, a public-private partnership focused on service delivery in refugee settings.

Previously she led the energy portfolio at the U.S. African Development Foundation, another federal government agency, where she worked for six years. Prior to this she was involved in the start-up of a solar company based in Somaliland and worked for the international NGO Pact in Kenya and Ethiopia. She holds a master’s degree in international business and development economics from the Fletcher School at Tufts University, where she wrote her master’s thesis on private electricity infrastructure investment. She holds a bachelor’s degree magna cum laude from Brown University.