Hilary Barry

Hilary Barry is founder and Secretary General of the LadyAgri Impact Investment Hub.  She is Irish. Since her first experience in Ghana in 1993, she has dedicated her career to the design and implementation of social impact programs across Africa, Caribbean and Pacific states (public health, agriculture, water, social development, cooperative management, agri-SME support and women entrepreneurship).

The LadyAgri approach is unique in that it takes a full 360° holistic approach to supporting women throughout agri-value chains from ‘Farm to Fork’. Through mentoring, tailor made technical assistance combined with B2B agri-business partnerships & gender smart investment in the agri-value chain, LadyAgri supports women in cooperatives and SME’s to build climate-smart businesses that drive a sustainable food system. Her mindset in setting up ‘LadyAgri’ is that investing in women is simply smart economics! Without access to meso-financing through patient capital and adapted financial services at community level, women led agri-businesses and cooperatives cannot grow and adapt to market challenges like climate change.

Hilary is a convinced venture philanthropist and is an advisor to the 2XGLOBALFORUM, which brings together the international financial and banking community committed to accelerating women’s access to gender and climate smart finance. She is a council member of the Ban-ki Moon Centre for Global Citizens council for Elevating the voices of Women in Agriculture EVWA. She is also an advisor to the Council for Agricultural Research and Economics and Research Center for Agricultural Policies and Bioeconomy .

She believes in patient investment and access to gender and climate smart finance products for women in agri-supply chains. Though challenging this creates a ‘rising tide’ effect and sustainable social , climate and environmental impact.

The LadyAgri theory of change focuses on supporting women and gender smart agri-business leaders to move away from a passive beneficiary role to becoming proactive well equipped ‘Agents of Change’ in their agri-businesses and communities.

LadyAgri is committed to stimulating a thriving gender smart agricultural sector capable of creating decent jobs for youth with necessary upskilling of women farmers and a qualified agri-workforce. Hilary believes, women’s access to farm inputs (seed, fertilizer), climate smart equipment, technology and appropriate finance will be a key performance indicator for countries, regions and international agri-corporate sector committed to sustainable food systems based on a regenerative agricultural model. Hilary leads the non-profit association with a purpose driven multidisciplinary team of specialists of 17 different nationalities who are investing in women and active across 30 African and Small Island Developing States