Melissa Mowbray-d’Arbela

Melissa is co-founder and CEO of Filligent Limited, a global biotech business that addresses health gaps in developing nations. She provides the company’s vision, while also focusing on strategic, policy and regulatory matters. Prior to founding Filligent, Melissa worked as a corporate lawyer at Skadden Arps in the U.S. and Asia, as an investment banker at Lehman Brothers in Asia, and as a private equity investor at GE Equity (Asia). She also co-founded Maven International, an ethical investment fund. In 2007, she co-founded PathFinders Limited, a Hong Kong-based organization that helps undocumented migrant women and their children find safe and legal homes. Melissa also serves as a hands-on board member of Mother’s Choice Limited, a community organization helping pregnant women and babies in Asia Pacific. In response to the unmet needs in Haiti following the earthquake in January 2010, Melissa conducted interviews of quake survivors, government officials, local corporations, and other disaster relief teams at their headquarters outside Haiti and helped to develop Project BackBone—which utilizes small but highly effective NGOs and corporations as “backbone organizations” to amplify the scale of assistance and improve coordination. Melissa completed a Juris Doctorate from New York University, School of Law. She is a member of the 2010 class of Henry Crown Fellows at the Aspen Institute.