Deon Woods Bell
Bio
Deon Woods Bell is a Senior Advisor for Global Policy at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation on the Financial Services for the Poor team. In that role, she leads on digital financial services policy and advocacy engagement with multilateral institutions, such as the United Nations, the World Bank, and the African Union, and with the U.S. Government. Her focus for her talk with Making Finance Work For Women includes advancing the harmonization of cross-border laws and policies and enabling environments for Women’s Economic Power.
Prior to joining the Gates Foundation, she was an Attorney Advisor and a Senior International Attorney for the Federal Trade Commission, the U.S. federal authority with jurisdiction over consumer protection, privacy, data security, and completion. She has also held positions at the U.S. Department of Commerce, the law firm of Steptoe & Johnson, and two Fortune 500 companies. Deon serves on several boards and advisory panels, including for the Smithsonian Women’s Committee, the Better Than Cash Alliance, the Digital Impact Alliance, the American University School of International Service, and the American Bar Association’s Cybersecurity Legal Task Force and Antitrust Law Section Consumer Protection and Data Privacy Officer.
