GLOBAL POLICY & DEVELOPMENT WORK
POLICY FOUNDATIONS: FIELD-INFORMED ENTERPRISE MODELS (RWANDA)
Between 2016 and 2018, Anu Shah’s policy work was grounded in field-level engagement with community-based enterprises in post-conflict environments. A defining experience during this period was her collaboration with Kraft Brewery in Rwanda, a locally rooted enterprise within the country’s emerging craft-brewing ecosystem.
Through this work, Anu provided pro bono advisory support, helping translate on-the-ground operational realities into more structured approaches for enterprise design, partnerships, and external engagement. She also facilitated exposure to international best practices by connecting the Kraft Brewery team with peers in the global food and beverage sector, including Beau’s All Natural Brewing Company. As part of this engagement, the enterprise successfully completed a crowdfunding initiative raising approximately USD 110,000, strengthening production capacity and operational resilience.
Alongside this work, her broader field engagement included partnerships with The Women’s Bakery in Rwanda—a cooperative enterprise empowering 110+ rural women and supplying nutritious bread to 300 schools—and with the Dr. Reddy’s Foundation in India to support adaptation of enterprise-led models.
GENDER PARITY POLICY & PROGRAM DESIGN: UNITED NATIONS
Building directly on her field experience in Rwanda, Anu began collaborating in 2019 with teams within the United Nations ecosystem, including work aligned with the Office of the Assistant Secretary-General. Her earlier engagement with locally rooted enterprises—ranging from small and medium businesses such as Kraft Brewery to women-led cooperative models—provided practical, evidence-based insight into how entrepreneurship can drive livelihoods, resilience, and women’s economic participation in post-conflict settings.
Translating these field learnings into institutional contexts, Anu focused on gender-parity policy and program development. Her work centered on shaping policy-ready approaches that link entrepreneurship, innovation, and women’s economic inclusion, with emphasis on micro-enterprise development, capacity building, and sustainable local production.
As part of this effort, a program was designed to advance gender parity through entrepreneurship and innovation in war-affected and fragile regions across West Africa and Central Asia. In its design phase, the program was structured to operate at population scale, with an intended first-year impact potential of up to 30 million women across participating regions, reflecting multilateral deployment ambitions rather than pilot-level intervention. The framework drew on women-led enterprise learnings while remaining adaptable across diverse economic, cultural, and post-conflict contexts.
TECHNOLOGY POLICY & PROGRAMS: DIGITAL SYSTEMS AT THE UNITED NATIONS
Between 2022-2024 Anu engaged in technology-focused policy and program initiatives at the United Nations. This body of work examined how digital platforms, data systems, and emerging technologies can be integrated into development and humanitarian programs to improve scale, measurement, and cross-border coordination.
Operating within multi-stakeholder policy environments, Anu contributed to initiatives and discussions where global technology organizations such as Meta, OpenAI, and Microsoft were part of broader conversations on artificial intelligence, data infrastructure, and workforce enablement. Her work focused on translating technological capability into programmatic design, ensuring innovation aligned with ethical, inclusive, and development-oriented policy goals.
Together, this phase of work reinforced the role of technology as a policy instrument, complementing entrepreneurship-led models and strengthening the ability of multilateral institutions to design programs responsive to complex global challenges.