Leadership

Analisa Leonor Balares is the City Lead for NASA Space Apps Cambridge, the local edition of the world’s largest hackathon, where she leads the initiative across the City of Cambridge, the Greater Boston Metropolitan Area, and beyond, across select academic institutions in New England.

Analisa Leonor Balares is the Founder & CEO of the Humansphere Foundation. She is also founder and CEO of a number of social enterprises in the educational media, consulting, and technology spaces, including the Womensphere Institute. She is a producer, innovator, artist, philanthropist, conservationist, and creator of platforms to empower diverse leaders, innovators, emerging leaders, artists and youth globally, working to create more inclusive, more sustainable futures.

Analisa is also the Convenor & Curator of the original Emerging Leaders Summits/Forums/Festival. For two decades, she has worked on leadership development, innovation, entrepreneurship, conservation, and advancing women and youth in sustainability and STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, Mathematics). She has produced over 100 summits/programs in these fields. In addition, Analisa is the Creator and Artist of the Vision 125 Global Art Series, a philanthropic initiative for the Humansphere Foundation and a cornerstone of the Foundation’s Art for Humanity Program.

Through her work today, Analisa is building and nurturing interdisciplinary, inter-generational communities of leaders, educators, innovators, artists, entrepreneurs, and students across academia, industry, and civil society, who share the goals of uplifting humanity, inspiring stewardship of the Earth, and exploring and expanding the boundaries of our knowledge and understanding of human society, our planet and our Universe.

For her life’s work, Analisa has been recognized as a UBS Global Visionary and World Economic Forum Young Global Leader, honored as one of the 100 Most Influential Filipinas in America and one of the 100 Most Influential Filipinas in the World, and received Distinguished Leader Awards from UN Women New York, Society of Foreign Consuls NY, The State of New York, and WNBA. She is also a Madam CJ Walker Leadership Award honoree of the US National Minority Business Council.

Analisa serves as a Member of the Advisory Board on Gender Equality of the President of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA), collaborating with the UN PGA President and an international advisory board of global leaders and experts.

Analisa also serves among the International Gender Champions and is an Action Coalition Partner of UN Women's Generation Equality Campaign. She serves as a Commissioner of the Women's Refugee Commission; Honorary Member of Women Moving Millions; Fundraising Committee Member of UN Women's Peace & Humanitarian Fund; Marketing Committee Member of Jewish Family Services; and an Advisory Board Member of Music Beyond and Infinity Capital. She has also served on Advisory Boards for JPMorgan Chase (on advancing women) and L’Oreal (on sustainable business leadership).

Analisa previously worked in investment banking at the Goldman Sachs High Technology Group and Morgan Stanley Energy & Power Group, working on and helping execute over $100 Billion in IPOs/secondary offerings and M&A transactions. She also worked in product management, technology strategy, business development, brand management, and global marketing at Microsoft, Milestone Capital, and Broad Holdings/85 Broads (now Ellevate Network).

Analisa is an alumna of Harvard Business School, Mount Holyoke College, Lester Pearson United World College, New York Film Academy, and the Manila Science High School, and was recently elected to serve as a Steering Council Member of the Pearson College Alumni Association.