Afsaneh Beschloss, Founder & CEO

Afsaneh Mashayekhi Beschloss is Founder and CEO of RockCreek. Previously, she was Managing Director and Partner at the Carlyle Group and served for two decades at the World Bank. As the World Bank’s Treasurer and Chief Investment Officer, she oversaw the Bank’s finances, investments, balance sheet, ratings, borrowings, and innovations in financial products, and led financial innovation work to better utilize multilateral balance sheets to generate financial resources for sustainable investments.

A pioneer in financial innovation to benefit emerging market economies, international financial institutions, and multilateral banks, Afsaneh created and led the World Bank’s financial advisory services, which built human capital and helped develop capital markets for central banks, sovereign wealth funds, and treasury departments in OECD and emerging market economies. And she developed and led the World Bank’s investments and policy work on areas including renewable energy, power, and infrastructure to reduce carbon emissions, as well as leading groundbreaking investments in wind and solar energy.

Afsaneh serves as chair of the PBS Foundation and serves on the boards of the Council on Foreign Relations; the Rockefeller Foundation, where she chairs the finance committee; the Bretton Woods Committee, where she co-chairs the Future of Finance Working Group; the World Resources Institute; Georgetown University; the Doris Duke Foundation; National Geographic; and the Center for Global Development. She was recognized by Carnegie Corporation in their Great Immigrants, Great Americans 2020 list, received the Institutional Investor Lifetime Achievement Award and the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Ripple of Hope Award, and she has been listed as one of the Most Powerful Women in Banking by American Banker and the 100 Most Influential Women in Finance by Barron’s.

Afsaneh holds an MPhil (Honors) in Economics from the University of Oxford, where she taught international trade and economic development. She is the co-author of The Economics of Natural Gas and author of numerous journal articles on energy, finance, renewable energy, and impact investing.