Gisel Kordestani

Gisel Kordestani is a founding member of The Leadership Now Project, an organization of business and thought leaders taking action to protect and renew American democracy. She sits on the Steering and Investor group and is co-chair of the California committee of members. In 2023, Gisel stepped off the board of Mercy Corps, a large global humanitarian aid organization engaged in transitional environments that have experienced natural disaster, economic collapse, or violent conflict. She was on the board for 9 years and was chairman of the board for 3 years, during a transformational time which included a full strategy review and turning over the leadership team so that Mercy Corps’ global team of humanitarians work together effectively on the front lines of today’s biggest crises. Gisel is a tech entrepreneur who has worked in early stage startups, management consulting and spent over 8 years at Google in senior global roles in finance and new business development. In 2013, she left Google and co-founded Crowdpac, a venture-backed, crowdfunding site for politics that empowers small dollar donors and helps thousands of candidates run for office. She sold the business in late 2019 and it’s still impacting elections today by making politics simple. Gisel is a member of The Council on Foreign Relations. She is an advisory board member of GazaSkyGeeks, a tech accelerator and coding academy that she created while at Google. She is also a producer of two films Under Siege and The Idol, both about Gaza. Gisel holds an MBA from Harvard Business School and an undergraduate degree in international affairs from the American University in Paris.