Managing Director, Newpearl Strategy

Policy Fellow Alumna, Centre for Science and Policy

Alisa Helbitz is Managing Director of Newpearl Strategy, a geopolitical consultancy specialising in media and public affairs. Alisa has extensive UK and international experience in media relations, social campaigning, crisis management and public affairs. Her career has spanned diplomacy and economic development in the Middle East and Africa to global impact investment market building.

Alisa spent 13 years at the forefront of building the impact investing market place. For eight years she led communications for Social Finance, a UK nonprofit start-up, taking the organisation from an unknown name to one of the most recognised international brands in the impact investment industry. In this role, she developed and executed communication campaigns to promote new global approaches to domestic violence, reoffending, homelessness and youth unemployment. Social Finance’s work has been widely reported in the global media including the Economist, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Forbes, BBC, Le Monde and FT among others.

Previously, Alisa served as Head of Communications for Sir Ronald Cohen, leading the media and public affairs work for the UK Commission on Unclaimed Assets which resulted in the world’s first social investment bank (Big Society Capital).

Alisa was also the Head of Communications for The Portland Trust, whose mission is to promote peace and stability between Israelis and Palestinians through economic development. She launched and edited the monthly Palestinian Economic Bulletin between 2006-2009 and oversaw the Economics and Peacemaking series. She spent more than six years as the Head of Press and Public Affairs at the British Embassy Tel Aviv (1999-2005) and two years as Foreign Spokesperson at Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Remembrance Authority.

Alisa is a senior advisor to Atalanta, a mission-driven firm with extensive advocacy, campaigning and strategic communications expertise.

She holds a BA in French and Spanish Literature from the Hebrew University. She was a Policy Fellow at the Centre for Science and Policy, University of Cambridge between 2017-2019.