Renata B. Kowalczyk is chief executive officer of the Wilmington Alliance, which was established in August 2019 with the merger of the Wilmington Leaders Alliance and the Wilmington Renaissance Corporation. Since the merger, Renata has focused the organization on equitable economic mobility, with the mission of bringing people together to drive innovative solutions, leverage resources, and promote opportunities to empower the city’s residents and businesses.
In 2019, the Delaware Business Times named Renata one of the 20 nonprofit leaders to watch in 2020. In 2020, Renata was included in Technical.ly’s list of RealLIST Connectors, “folks working to build their local tech, entrepreneurship and innovation community by linking others.” She has been interviewed for the National League of Cities’ Roadmap to Inclusive Entrepreneurship Municipal Action Guide and represented Wilmington on several NLC panels. Renata was also featured in the Federal Reserve Bank’s video speaking about the Reinventing Our Communities program and was invited to serve on the host committee for the Greater Philadelphia Social Innovation Awards. In 2023, Renata was invited to present at the Federal Reserve Bank’s 2023 Policy Summit where she shared insights and best practices for developing workforce equity plans and discussed how local solutions can strengthen regional systems. In December 2023, Renata was named one of the 222 Most Impactful Leaders in the First State, and one of 12 in the Economic Development. In January 2024, Renata was selected for a 3-year term to the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System’s Community Advisory Council.
Prior to becoming a non-profit leader, Renata’s career included leadership roles in several financial institutions, including JPMorgan Chase, Bank of New York, and Merrill Lynch. She also worked as a business consultant for startups and small businesses, as an angel investor for women-owned businesses, and in 2021 she joined RareBreed Ventures VC Fund as an LP. Renata has an M.B.A. from Columbia University, an M.S. in nonprofit leadership from the University of Pennsylvania, and a bachelor’s degree in economics from Baruch College – City University of New York.
Renata is a native of Poland, who arrived in United States two days after the fall of the Berlin Wall, as a 22-year old student, speaking three sentences in English and having $20 in her pocket. She is passionate about equitable community-based economic development and building ecosystems that are inclusive and data driven.
LinkedIN profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/renatabkowalczyk/
