Alona Ponomareva is a Principal Investment Officer in the Central and Eastern Europe Department of the International Finance Corporation (IFC), based in Washington DC. Starting in August 2007, she will be based in Kyiv, Ukraine, with direct responsibility for further development of the IFC investment program in that market (and with a special emphasis on equity investments).

For the past six years, Ms. Ponomareva was a portfolio manager in the Private Equity and Real Estate group of the Pension Investments Department (PID) of the World Bank. PID is tasked with investing the $15+bn World Bank Staff Pension Plan across a broad range of asset classes, including public equity, fixed income, private equity, hedge funds, real estate and infrastructure.

While at PID, Ms. Ponomareva’s responsibilities included sourcing, analyzing, negotiating and monitoring private equity and real estate investments for the World Bank Pension Plan, in a number of strategies, including buyouts, venture capital, distressed and emerging markets. In her role, she also represented the World Bank Pension Plan on Limited Partner Advisory Boards of multiple private equity and venture capital funds.

Prior to PID, Ms. Ponomareva was an Investment Officer in the Central and Eastern Europe and Latin America departments of IFC where she worked on evaluating, structuring and negotiating new project finance investments and managed IFC’s existing portfolio.

Prior to joining IFC, Ms. Ponomareva was with the Financial Advisory Services practice of Ernst & Young LLP, where she analyzed investment opportunities in Latin America and Eastern Europe.

Ms. Ponomareva is a Chartered Financial Analyst. She earned her MBA from Georgetown University in Washington DC and a BA in Foreign Languages (with distinction) from the Moscow Linguistic University in Russia. A native Russian speaker, she is fluent in English and Spanish and proficient in German.