Mike Belinsky
Mike Belinsky serves as the Chair of the Board of the African Tech Futures Lab. He is Director of the AI Institute at Schmidt Sciences, which supports researchers who are working to make AI systems competent, trustworthy, reliable, and able to effectively partner with human scientists on the next generation of discovery.
Prior to Schmidt Sciences, Mike was a principal at The Bridgespan Group, where he led teams that addressed complex strategy and execution challenges for foundations, impact investors, and nonprofits. At Bridgespan, Mike also helped build the impact investing practice.
Mike co-founded Instiglio, a social enterprise that creates Development Impact Bonds and results-based financing programs in low- and middle-income countries. At Instiglio, Mike led the team that designed the first impact bond in India—the Educate Girls Development Impact Bond—which improved primary education outcomes and served as a model for impact bonds in India and beyond. For this work, he received the Echoing Green fellowship and the Forbes 30 Under 30 Social Entrepreneurship award.
Mike holds advisory roles at Ameelio, Board.Dev, MIT Solve, and the Ukraine Math and Science Fund. He has a BA in economics and government from Dartmouth College and an MPP from Harvard Kennedy School. He was born in St. Petersburg, Russia, and lives with his wife and two children in New York City.
