Maura O’Neill is the former chief innovation officer and senior counselor to the administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development, where she had responsibility for inspiring and leading breakthroughs innovations in foreign assistance and development worldwide. In addition, she co-led USAID Forward, the agency's major reform initiative as well as created ground-breaking public-private partnerships in supply chain sourcing, mobile money, gender equity, entrepreneurship and new models for sourcing and scaling development interventions. She served on the White House Innovation Cohort assisting the Obama administration in innovation across federal government. O’Neill has started four companies in the fields of electricity efficiency, customer info systems and billing, e-commerce and digital education.