Dr. Ezgi Canpolat is a globally recognized anthropologist and innovation leader shaping climate solutions and AI for social good at scale. At the World Bank, she leads energy transition and climate programming in Eastern and Southern Africa, advancing inclusive development strategies and mobilizing climate finance. She was recently selected for the prestigious Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Residency and serves as a Visiting Postdoctoral Scholar at Harvard University, where she co-leads a Salata Institute-funded research project on energy transitions in the Middle East. Her work has been featured in The Washington Post, and she previously directed gender-responsive climate programming at the $10 billion Climate Investment Funds, where she co-founded the $11 million Women-Led Coal Transition initiative – the first of its kind globally. Ezgi studied innovation and social entrepreneurship at Harvard Business School and artificial intelligence at the MIT Media Lab, and she holds a PhD in Cultural Anthropology from the Graduate Center, City University of New York (CUNY). Her research and collaborations inform both global policy and local action, engaging development banks, academic institutions and philanthropic networks.