Rutendo Chigora

Biography

Rutendo Chigora is Vice President in Lazard’s Special Opportunities Group, a highly selective multidisciplinary advisory team that reports directly to and supports the CEO of Lazard on high-impact investment banking assignments, internal strategic initiatives, corporate development and thought leadership. Prior to joining Lazard, Rutendo was an Investment Associate at Bridgewater Associates, where she led the Portfolio Strategies team, and conducted investment research on global macro, emerging markets and China. She was also a Public Policy Fellow at McKinsey & Company and a consultant at the Rwanda Development Board on private sector development and trade and investment promotion initiatives. Rutendo also founded and ran ZW Connect, a social enterprise that incubated small agricultural businesses in Harare, Zimbabwe. Rutendo holds a BA from the University of Pennsylvania where she graduated magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa, as well as Masters degrees in Public Policy from the Blavatnik School and Business Administration from Said Business School at the University of Oxford where she was a Rhodes Scholar. Rutendo is passionate about development finance and expanding economic opportunity, and spends her time volunteering as a college and career readiness mentor, and also facilitates leadership development programming for the Schwarzman Scholarship. She has been named a 2023 Fellow of the Economic Club of New York, and recognized as one of the top 100 Ethnic Minority Future Leaders by EMpower/Yahoo!Finance in 2021 and 2022.