Lois Bruu is vice president of the Humanitarian & Development team at MasterCard, where she designs digital services that foster financial inclusion and economic development in developing countries. She leads product development for the micro-commerce sector, which is focused on connecting consumers and merchants to the formal economy primarily in Sub-Saharan Africa and India. She has also held key partnership management roles, including managing MasterCard’s relationship with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Prior to joining MasterCard, Bruu served as consulting president of Concero Connect, L3C, a social enterprise designed to deliver affordable internet and mobile money services via satellite to post offices in Africa. For 13 years, she held leadership positions at TradeCard, a former cloud-based supply chain management platform, and helped grow the company’s revenue to $50 million.

Bruu co-founded two international satellite companies with social missions in emerging markets and grew them to more than $100 million valuations. BelCom was a telecommunications company for the former Soviet Union that reached $15 million in revenue, later purchased by Lockheed Martin Global Telecommunications. DTV was a satellite television and internet service for Russia. For both, she focused on allocating bandwidth to underserved communities.