Phyllis Kurlander Costanza is the CEO of the UBS Optimus Foundation. Prior to this, she was with the Children's Investment Fund Foundation (CIFF) and also served as a CIFF board member for eight years. Before joining the non-profit sector, Ms Costanza worked for more than a decade as a management consultant in Washington, DC and Vienna, Austria and also lived and worked in Kiev, Ukraine on a USAID program involving the privatization of state-owned enterprises. She also worked for New York State Governor Mario Cuomo, advising on policy and politics in Manhattan, and started her career working for Prudential.