Expanding Livelihood Opportunities for Poor Households

Team

Paula Nimpuno-Parente

Program Officer Johannesburg

Paula Nimpuno-Parente works on economic fairness issues from the foundation's Southern Africa office. The goal of her grant making is to expand and strengthen economic opportunities, and ensure that poor households and communities build and widen their asset base over the long term.

Before joining the Ford Foundation in 2001, Paula worked at the Bernard van Leer Foundation in The Hague, where she was a program specialist with grant-making responsibilities, first in Brazil and later in Eastern and Southern Africa. During this period, she also studied community foundations in South Africa as vehicles for local giving to grassroots organizations and resources for economic development.

Early in her career, Paula researched women's issues in Thailand and Kenya, focusing on access to low-income housing markets and employment opportunities in the informal economy.

Paula has degrees in geography and business management from the Eduardo Mondlane University in Maputo, Mozambique. Her master's degree is in development studies from the Institute of Social Studies in The Hague. She also has two postgraduate diplomas: She completed her human settlement planning studies at the Institute of Housing Studies in the Netherlands, and her gender and development degree is from DPU, University College London.