ZENIA TATA

Executive Director, International Development Enterprises

Topic: New Developments for the World: Innovations for Developing Countries and the Rest of Us

Zenia Tata has served as Executive Director of International Development Enterprises (IDE-USA) since July 2005. Originally from Bombay, India, she brings more than 17 years experience working with non-profits in the U.S. and India.

Prior to her work at IDE Ms. Tata was Executive Director of a 24-hour crisis center for five years. Before relocating to Colorado, she lived in Alaska for five years, where she developed and ran rehabilitative programs for severely abused children and worked extensively with Native Alaskan tribes on child welfare issues. In India, she worked for nonprofit organizations in Bombay, teaching adult literacy programs in urban slums and coordinating medical aid for children forced to work in the sex trade.

Ms. Tata’s interests include hiking, traveling and scuba diving. She is also an active volunteer, most recently working with a medical response team as a grief and trauma counselor immediately after the tsunami in South Asia.

About IDE

International Development Enterprises (IDE) is a Lakewood-based international non-profit organization dedicated to eradicating global poverty through income generation programs for the rural poor. More than 1.1 billion individuals on our planet live in extreme poverty. Of these, 800 million live in rural areas earning their living on small plots of land. IDE believes the path out of poverty for these rural families is to increase their incomes from small-plot agriculture. Efforts to grow GDP, increase large farm production, industrialize, or even eradicate disease, while beneficial, are not adequate to lift the rural poor from poverty. A strategy to end poverty must focus on increasing cash incomes without the artifice of subsidies. For more information, visit www.ide-international.org.