The Fletcher School

A Graduate School of International Affairs

Speaker Bios


Jenny Aker Jenny C. Aker is Assistant Professor of Development Economics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy. Ms. Aker received her Ph.D. in Agricultural Economics at the University of California-Berkeley and served as a post-doctoral fellow at the Center for Global Development (CGD) at the University of California, Berkeley. Ms. Aker's research agenda assesses the impact of agro-food market performance on producer and consumer welfare in sub-Saharan Africa, with a specific focus on the impact of information (technology) on grain price dispersion, market actors' behavior and welfare in Niger. After receiving her Bachelor's degree in History and French from Duke University (1993), Ms. Aker worked as a teacher at the Casablanca American School in Morocco. She obtained her Master's degree in Development Economics and Public International Law from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy (Tufts University) in 1997, and worked as a researcher on a Fulbright grant at the University of Hassan-II in Morocco. Ms. Aker then worked as the Regional Food Security Advisor and Deputy Regional Director for Catholic Relief Services (CRS) in West and Central Africa from 1998-2003. She has worked as a consultant for a variety of international and non-governmental organizations in West, Central and East Africa, including Catholic Relief Services, CHF International, CARE, Helen Keller International, the World Bank and the FAO.
Hugh Allen Hugh Allen has worked in development since 1970, focusing for most of the last 15 years on microfinance and technology-based market development activities. For 13 years he worked for CARE and was their Chief Technical Advisor for Small Economic Activity Development in Africa. It was during this time that he first came across community-managed microfinance and realised its potential to reach the very poor who are, generally, unable to take advantage of standard microfinance services. Since 1999, Mr. Allen has worked independently to promote its adoption at very large-scale in Africa, and in 2006 founded VSL Associates to promote this approach through numerous multi-sectoral development agencies and southern NGOs. These include CARE, CRS, Plan and World Vision who have all adopted community-managed microfinance as their preferred approach to reaching the rural poor in Africa. He was co-facilitator of the SEEP working group on Savings-led Financial Services and is on the faculty of the Boulder Institute of Microfinance and Southern New Hampshire University’s Micro-enterprise and Development Institute. He has published a Programme Guide on setting up Village Savings and Loan Associations and has also written technical training manuals published by Practical Action publications. He was a contributor to PAs recent ‘What’s Wrong with Microfinance?’
Hugh Aprile Hugh Aprile has worked in international development for the past decade, primarily with Catholic Relief Services (CRS) in El Salvador, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Haiti, and with CARE and CRS for the past five years in Guatemala. Mr. Aprile currently serves as CRS’s Head of Programming in Guatemala where he supervises the team of senior managers responsible for implementing projects in health, education, agriculture, food security, water and sanitation, micro-finance, and human rights. Mr. Aprile has a B.A. in Political Science and Italian from Indiana University, and a Masters from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy (Tufts University). In August of this year Hugh will assume the Country Representative position for CRS in Nicaragua.
Jeffrey Ashe Jeffrey Ashe is the Director of Community Finance at Oxfam America where he and his team launched Saving for Change three years ago with plans to organize over half a million poor women and men into self-help saving and lending groups over the next three years. Saving for Change uses a unique microfinance methodology that starts with savings mobilized and administered through small independent groups rather than loans provided through microfinance institutions. He also teaches microfinance at Brandeis and Columbia Universities. Prior to coming to Oxfam, Mr. Ashe founded Working Capital and served as its Executive Director. Working Capital was for several years the largest microfinance program in the United States and franchised its model in eight states and Russia. Working Capital received the first Presidential Award for Excellence for microfinance from President Clinton at a celebration at the White House. As Senior Associate Director at ACCION International, Mr. Ashe was Director of the "PISCES Project," the first worldwide investigation of programs reaching the smallest economic activities of the poor. In the early 1980s PISCES laid the groundwork for the best practice work that has followed over the past two and a half decades. At ACCION he assisted in the dissemination of peer group lending throughout Latin America. After he left ACCION, he designed, assisted and evaluated microfinance programs in thirty-five countries in Asia, Africa, Latin America and Eastern Europe. Mr. Ashe has published extensively in the micro-enterprise field and is the author of several books and articles on the topic. He holds a BA in Political Science from the University of California, Berkley, and an MA in Sociology from Boston University.
Marc Bavois Marc Bavois is Freedom from Hunger’s Director of Savings Group Methodologies. He develops group methodologies, dissemination models and integration strategies for the Saving for Change program. During his eight years with Freedom from Hunger, he has conducted technical assistance, training workshops, and program design and assessment for savings group and microcredit programs in eight African countries. He holds a Bachelor of Arts from the University of California in International Relations and Economics.
Mamadou Bitèye Prior to being appointed as Oxfam America’s Regional Director for West Africa, Mamadou Bitèye held the position of Senior Program Officer in WARO from 2002 – 2006, serving as the Interim Regional Director during the transition period. Among his notable accomplishments are coordinating the implementation of the “Saving for Change” microfinance program in the region and leading OA’s growing Extractive Industries work in West Africa. He combines a Program Officer’s on-the-ground perspective on our work with a personable, energetic management style that is held in high esteem by his colleagues. Prior to joining OA, Mr. Bitèye headed the Senegalese organization Association for the Development at the Grassroots, and worked for the African Development Foundation and the International Union for the Conservation of Nature. He holds a Master’s degree in Agricultural Economics from Ohio State University at Columbus, Ohio (USA). Though he has deep roots in the region and in his native Senegal, Mr. Bitèye has also traveled and studied extensively in the US and Eastern Europe, and is multilingual in English, French, Russian, Portuguese, and Wolof.
Sybil Chidiac Sybil Chidiac is the Technical Advisor of Knowledge Sharing and Learning within CARE USA’s Economic Development Programming and has served as the Knowledge Manager of the Building a More Effective Learning Organizations project over the past year and a half. Ms. Chidiac’s specific role as a Technical Advisor in CARE’s ED programming is to develop and implement a strategy for analyzing, documenting and sharing economic development programs and fostering ways for these approaches to be replicated and/or scaled-up. She works closely with the Economic Development global team to identify the key program innovation areas, document and share lessons learned across CARE and the greater Economic Development community. Ms. Chidiac has seven years of experience working in economic development programming with particular focus on rural savings-led groups and facilitating basic marketing, accounting and management trainings to non-English or French speaking populations. She has received formal training in value-chain analysis, microfinance financial management, project design, project implementation and development program evaluations. Ms. Chidiac is fluent in French, English and Haitian Creole.
Bob Christen Robert Christen is the Director of Financial Services for the Poor at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Mr. Christen has over 25 years of experience in leading the development of the microfinance sector the aim of which is to increase the access of the poor to financial services. He is recognized internationally for his leadership in advancing the microfinance sector as a global industry in a number of areas: commercial innovations in microfinance operations, microfinance industry performance benchmarking, international professional training programs and policies in regulation and supervision. Mr. Christen has worked in over 40 countries advising governments, banks, and microfinance service providers. He has held a variety of management positions including Senior Advisor to the Consultative Group to Assist the Poorest (CGAP ) at the World Bank from 1998-2004; and has founded a number of important initiatives that serve the industry including: the MicroBanking Bulletin and subsequently the MicroFinance Information Exchange, the Microfinance Management Institute, the Boulder Institute of Microfinance. Mr. Christen holds a Masters Degree in Agricultural Economics and Development Finance from Ohio University which granted him the Distinguished Alumni Award in 2005. He received his B.A. in Political Science from Beloit College. Mr. Christen is the author of a large number of publications in the microfinance field.
Daryl Collins Daryl Collins has leveraged a successful career in portfolio management into research on the financial behavior of the poor. She conceived and led the Financial Diaries in South Africa as a member of the Finance faculty at the University of Cape Town and continues to carry out financial diaries and other development finance research as a senior associate at Bankable Frontier Associates in Boston. Ms. Collins is the lead author of “Portfolios of the Poor,” due out in May 2009.
Sandra Contreras Sandra Contreras has been providing program support to the Population Council in Guatemala for two years. Ms. Contreras has played a variety of roles in the implementation and expansion of the Council’s targeted, evidence-based adolescent policy and program development initiatives in Guatemala. Most recently she has been actively involved in the design and implementation of a financial and market literacy project for rural indigenous youth in collaboration with Save the Children and Kiej de los Bosques. In addition to her Council tenure, Ms. Contreras is of Salvadoran origin and has lived in Guatemala for over five years. She holds a degree in International Development from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy and has more than nine years experience in Central America, Haiti and the Democratic Republic of Congo working on women’s empowerment issues with the El Salvadoran Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Feinstein Center (Tufts University), FINCA International, Save the Children, and The Population Council.
Abdoul Karim Coulibaly With more than nine years experiences in Survey Design and Monitoring Evaluation (M&E;), Abdoul Karim Coulibaly is the Technical Advisor, M&E; for CARE Access Africa microfinance Program. He is currently developing and implementing the Access Africa M&E; framework and mainstreaming a Village Savings and Loan (VSL) Management Information System (MIS) across all CARE country offices in Africa. Mr. Coulibaly joined CARE Mali in 2000 as Computer-Statistician for the Design Monitoring and Evaluation (DM&E;) unit and headed the unit from 2003 to 2007. He recently completed a Peter Bell Fellowship with CARE USA’s Economic Development Unit piloting the new VSL MIS system across four countries in Africa. A native of Mali, Mr. Coulibaly holds a master’s degree in demography from the Institut de Formation et de Recherche Démographiques (I.FO.R.D), Yaounde ( Republic of Cameroon), and a Bachelor’s degree in Statistics from Ecole Nationale D’Economie Appliquée (E.N.E.A.), Dakar (Republic of Senegal ).
John Gaunt John Gaunt has more than 20 years of experience in the international research and consulting fields with a focus on development, soils and agriculture. A senior research post at Rothamsted Research (UK) from 1994 to 2003, Mr. Gaunt was previously based at the International Rice Research Institute in the Philippines for five years. From 2000 to 2006, John provided Programme management support to the UK Department for International Development, Natural Resource Systems Programme. Mr. Gaunt led research that developed a sustainable and scalable group based savings and lending approach with extremely low operational costs called RojiRoti, serving the needs of its client base of predominantly poor, extremely poor and women in the states of Bihar, Madhya Pradesh and Easter Uttar Pradesh in India. Through a new venture, Mr. Gaunt is currently exploring how to make C Markets work for poor and socially disadvantaged rural communities. Mr. Gaunt currently holds a courtesy appointment at Cornell University as an adjunct Associate Professor in the College of Argiculture and Life Sciences.
Tony Gaunt For more than 12 years, Tony Gaunt has been with Goldman Sachs in its Technology Division playing various roles in its infrastructure field involving the life cycle management of the bank’s technology. In the past year, Mr. Gaunt joined Goldman Sach’s Public Service Programme as a fellow, working with CARE as a part of their Access Africa team. His role within the Access Africa programme has been to explore the client-end technology options to aid in achieving their goals; a particular area of interest is the potential use of mobile payments / banking products to help form linkages from CARE’s remote VSLA groups to financial services providers possible.
Malcolm Harper Malcolm Harper began his career in marketing in England, and then taught at the University of Nairobi. He was Professor of Enterprise Development at Cranfield, and since 1995 he has worked independently, mainly in India. He has published on self-employment, enterprise development, micro-finance and livelihoods, most recently ‘Inclusive value chains in India – Linking the poor to modern markets’, ‘What’s wrong with microfinance?’ and ‘Development, divinity and dharma - the role of religion in development and micro-finance institutions.’ He was Chairman of Basix Finance for ten years, and is Chairman of M-CRIL. He was the founding editor of ‘Small Enterprise Development’ (now ‘Enterprise Development and Microfinance’), and is a director and trustee of Homeless International, EDA (UK) Limited, APT Enterprise Development and PA Publications in the United Kingdom. He has also worked on poverty issues in Bangladesh and Pakistan, and in East and West Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, the Middle East and Gulf area, South and South East Asia and China, and in the United Kingdom. Malcolm Harper was educated at Oxford, Harvard and Nairobi.
Lauren Hendricks Lauren Hendricks is the Director of the Economic Development Unit at CARE, responsible for strategic direction and technical leadership for over 100 active microfinance and enterprise development programs in 54 countries. Prior to joining CARE, Ms. Hendricks was a program specialist at the Center for Institutional Reform and the Informal Sector (IRIS) at the University of Maryland. Her research focused on the development of low-cost tools to assess the poverty outreach of USAID funded microenterprise development programs. Ms. Hendricks has more than nine years of experience evaluating, designing and promoting the development of microfinance programs worldwide. She spent three years in the Republic of Georgia managing a microfinance program and overseeing it’s transformation into a locally registered and managed institution. Ms. Hendricks has a B.A. from UCLA in Political Science and a M.A. from UCLA in Africa Studies. Before becoming involved in international development, Ms. Hendricks worked for several years as a loan officer for a commercial real estate mortgage banker, Keystone Mortgage Company.
Amy Hilleboe Amy Hilleboe is the Senior Technical Advisor for Disaster Risk Reduction with Catholic Relief Services Emergency Operations Department. Working in the field of humanitarian assistance and international development for 20 years, Ms. Hilleboe was previously with the Emergency Response Team at CRS. Ms. Hilleboe holds a master’s degree from the Thunderbird School of Global Management.
Madeline Hirschland Madeline Hirschland is the editor and an author of the book Savings Services for the Poor: An Operational Guide, the lead author of the literature review and synthesis paper in the Ford Foundation “Reaching the Hard to Reach: Comparative Study of Member-owned Financial Institutions in Remote Rural Areas” studies, and the author of CGAP’s “Deposit Services for the Poor: Preliminary Guidance for Donors”. She has facilitated three virtual conferences on small-deposit savings mobilization and has worked in the field of microfinance for twenty years. As Director of Save the Children’s microenterprise office, Ms. Hirschland catalyzed microfinance institutions that are now industry leaders in Jordan, Lebanon and Palestine. She also has provided strategic direction and technical assistance to microfinance institutions in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. As a freelance consultant, Ms. Hirschland has worked for CARE, Chemonics, CGAP, Development Alternatives, Inc., Ford Foundation, Freedom from Hunger, the Gates Foundation, Opportunity International Bank of Malawi, Oxfam America, The SEEP Network, the UNDP and the World Bank among others. Madi holds a B.A. and M.P.A. from Harvard University.
Jude Jacotin Working in Haiti as the microfinance and savings project manager for CRS, Jude Jacotin has more than nine years experience in the field of microfinance and has worked extensively with Mutelles de Solidarite and village banks in Haiti. Mr. Jacotin plays a key role in coordinating activities and maintaining contact with MFIs throughout the region, facilitating a number of initiatives between micro entrepreneurs and mutual institutions and reinforcing the mobilization of the saving in the targeted areas.
Prabhat Labh Prabhat Labh is a Senior Technical Advisor in CARE’s pan-Africa microfinance initiative ‘Access Africa’. With more than 13 years of experience in the sectors of microfinance, micro-enterprise development and agricultural finance, Mr. Labh, as part of Access Africa, supports CARE country programs and Village Savings and Loan Associations developing linkages with financial institutions. Prior to moving to Africa, Prabhat managed a microfinance investment fund set up by CARE to support communities affected by the south Asia Tsunami disaster in Indonesia, India and Sri Lanka. Mr. Labh’s has extensive experience in managing microfinance funds, carrying out institutional assessment and institutional capacity building of nascent and emerging microfinance institutions and establishing linkages with financial institutions and insurance companies. Mr. Labh holds an MBA and is now based in Tanzania.
Dorothy Largay Dorothy Largay is Founder and CEO of Linked Foundation, a private foundation that promotes and invests in high-impact solutions to alleviate poverty in Latin America, with a focus on economic self-reliance and healthcare for women. Prior to starting Linked three years ago, Ms. Largay was a management consultant in the US and Europe specializing in leadership and organizational development. Her career includes 15 years of executive coaching to high-tech and bio-tech companies, serving as the Executive Director at the Santa Clara University’s Executive Development Center, and the Director of worldwide Leadership Development at Apple, Inc. She received her B.A. from Boston College and Ph.D. in Psychology from the University of Oregon.
Joanna Ledgerwood Joanna Ledgerwood joined the Aga Khan Foundation in 2007 where she leads the Foundation’s enterprise development and access to finance activities. Prior to moving to Geneva, Ms. Ledgerwood was based in Uganda as the Deputy Director for the USAID-funded Support for Private Enterprise Expansion and Development (SPEED) project, which focused on assisting MFIs to become regulated deposit-taking institutions. Before Uganda, she was Deputy Director for the Microenterprise Access to Banking Services (MABS) Project, a USAID-funded project located in the Philippines that assists rural banks to provide financial services to microenterprises. Until moving overseas, Ms. Ledgerwood spent eight years consulting to the banking and microfinance sectors and two years as an International Advisor with CALMEADOW in Toronto Canada, providing technical assistance to MFIs in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. She is a frequent presenter at international conferences and has written numerous papers and books, including Transforming MFIs - Providing Full Financial Services to the Poor (2006) with Victoria White, and the Microfinance Handbook (1998). Ms. Ledgerwood holds an M.B.A. degree, specializing in International Finance, from McGill University in Montreal, Canada and a B.Sc. from the University of Alberta.
David Leege David Leege leads the Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning Unit of the Program Quality and Support Department of Catholic Relief Services (CRS) in Baltimore , Maryland . He also serves as lead for the agency strategy of Integral Human Development (IHD). Prior to working in PQSD at CRS headquarters, Mr. Leege worked overseas in Rwanda, Burundi, Cambodia, Pakistan, Benin, Angola and Mauritania. David earned a Ph.D. in Agricultural Economics from the University of Montpellier I (France) with a specialty in rural finance.
Joyce Lehman Joyce Lehman joined the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in 2008 as a Program Officer for Microfinance within the Financial Services for the Poor initiative. She came to the foundation with ten years experience working in the global microfinance sector on short and long term assignments in more than 25 countries. >From 2004 to 2007, Joyce spent most of her time in Afghanistan working at various levels to help establish and support a microfinance sector in a difficult post-conflict environment. Prior to her work in international economic development, Joyce was in private practice as a Certified Public Accountant and taught university level business courses.
Brett Matthews Brett Matthews is founder and managing partner of Mathwood Consulting Company, whose mission is to help the world’s poorest billion rural people gain access to community-based microfinance. Mr. Matthews has more than 17 years of experience in banking and development, first at Metro (now Alterna) Credit Union in Toronto, and since 2002, as a self-employed consultant. Mr. Matthews earned his MBA (finance) from the Schulich School of Business at York University, and his MA (international development) at the University of Toronto.
Janina Matuszeski Janina Matuszeski joined Oxfam in September 2008 and currently oversees the operational, qualitative and quantitative research for the Saving for Change program in Mali, Cambodia and El Salvador. Her background includes two years as a water and sanitation Peace Corps Volunteer in Mali, and an undergraduate degree in physics and chemistry. Ms. Matuszeski received her PhD in economics from Harvard University in 2007, with specialties in development economics, political economy and macroeconomics. Following this, Ms. Matuszeski worked for a year at Ideas42, a microfinance research center at Harvard, where she oversaw randomized controlled trials of small business development projects in India.
Kate McKee Kate McKee is a Senior Adviser at CGAP. Kate McKee joined CGAP in September 2006 as Senior Adviser for Policy, Outreach and Aid Effectiveness. She leads CGAP’s work on consumer protection with the policy and investor communities, and a special project on the performance of state-owned banks. From 1998 McKee served as Director of the Microenterprise Development office at the United States Agency for International Development. McKee is a development economist, with a master’s degree in Public and International Affairs from the Woodrow Wilson School of Princeton University.
Rewa Shankar Misra Rewa Shankar Misra works with the Coady International Institute as a lecturer, specializing in the areas of microfinance and livelihoods. Ms. Mirsa brings to the Institute more than eight years of experience working with agencies such as the ILO, Action Aid and CARE on microfinance and microenterprise development; her main interests are in impact research, policy research/evaluation and institutional development. As a consultant, Ms. Mirsa has been involved in numerous projects across India, Indonesia, Angola and Bangladesh. Rewa holds a Master of Philosophy in Sociology from the Delhi School of Economics, a Certificate in Business Accounting from the Charter Institute of Management Accounting in the UK, and a Certificate in Community-Based Microfinance from the Coady Institute.
Candace Nelson Candace Nelson has been engaged with microfinance in Africa, Latin America and the U.S. for over 25 years. Currently she is a Senior Advisor to the Global Financial Education Program, responsible for curriculum design and training of trainers. In this position, she has written multiple curriculum modules including Young People: Your Future, Your Money and Risk Management and Insurance: Protect Your Family’s Future. From 1999 – 2006, she developed and managed a grant program supporting economic empowerment for women in East Africa on behalf of the McKnight Foundation. During this period, McKnight was an early funder of innovative savings-led and microinsurance programs in Uganda and Tanzania. For the Aspen Institute, Ms. Nelson has researched and documented best practices in access to markets, training, and technology in microenterprise development in the United States. As a Senior Associate of the Small Enterprise Education and Promotion (SEEP) Network from 1991- 1998, she facilitated professional working groups, wrote training manuals, conducted training in French and Spanish, and wrote the network's quarterly newsletter. Ms. Nelson served as a member of the USAID’s AIMS project team as Managing Editor of Learning from Clients: Assessment Tools for Microfinance Practitioners. She has B.A. in History from Smith College and an M.S. in Rural Sociology from the University of Wisconsin. She resides in Concord, MA.
Vinod Parmeshwar Vinod Parmeshwar is responsible for overall program management of Oxfam America’s Saving for Change program including developing manuals, training staff, systems and financial management. Vinod has significant expertise in adult education pedagogy, program design, financial analysis and team management and has worked with Catholic Relief Services, SEWA Bank and Citibank before joining Oxfam. Vinod teaches microfinance at Brandeis University in USA and Southern New Hampshire University’s Microenterprise Development Certificate in South Africa. He has made presentations and trained people in microfinance in Bangladesh, Cambodia, El Salvador, Ethiopia, India, Macedonia, Mali, Peru, Senegal, South Africa, Tanzania and the United States. Vinod holds a Masters in Business Administration.
David Porteus David Porteous is the founder and director of Bankable Frontier Associates, a niche consulting firm based in Boston. The firm specializes in three practice areas in the financial sector: the application of technology to financial services, housing finance and performance measurement for financial institutions. Clients include telco and banking groups, financial regulators, bi-lateral and multi-lateral donors and private foundations. He also sits on the Strategy Committee of the CGAP Technology Program, the Vodafone-Nokia Social Impact of Mobiles (SIM) Panel and the Advisory Board of the Center for Financial Inclusion. In previous roles, David has been employed in an executive capacity in public, private and public-private financial entities. All these roles have involved developing or supporting innovative approaches to the extension of financial services, including several m-banking initiatives. David has a B. Comm at UCT, M. Phil at Cambridge, and s Ph.D in economics at Yale.
Paul Rippey The author of a soon-to-be-published CGAP focus note on microfinance and climate change, focusing on the use of savings groups both as distribution channels for clean-energy products, Paul Rippey began his microfinance-focused career starting a large program in Uganda. During this time, he carried out an evaluation of the impact of external loans on the MMD groups in Niger. Mr. Rippey is working with CARE Kenya on various innovative group formation approaches which will test the ideas of his publication and aims to be working soon with the Aga Khan Foundation in savings group promotion in Pakistan.
April Rinne Former director of venture development at Unitus, a global microfinance accelerator and provider of innovative solutions to global poverty, April Rinne provided legal and strategic advice to the Unitus family, including the new commercially-oriented strategic affiliates Unitus Capital and Unitus Investment Group. Prior to Unitus, Ms. Rinne was a private lawyer focusing primarily on international microfinance-related transactions for several years, both in the United States and abroad. In this capacity, she advised numerous non-profit and for-profit microfinance clients and worked on various microfinance transactions, including the Blue Orchard Loans for Development (BOLD) 2006 securitization which won international legal awards. In addition to her work at Unitus, Ms. Rinne is a trainer for the International Development Law Organization (IDLO) and its microfinance courses throughout the developing world, and she frequently serves as a panellist and speaker on microfinance-related topics. Ms. Rinne is a graduate of Harvard Law School (J.D.) and the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy (M.A. in International Finance and Development Economics).
Marguerite S. Robinson Marguerite S. Robinson received her B.A. and Ph.D. degrees from Harvard University and served as Professor of Anthropology and Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at Brandeis University before joining the Harvard Institute for International Development (1978-2000). Now retired from Harvard, she is an independent consultant in international development, with a specialty in commercial microfinance. Dr. Robinson has worked extensively in Asia, in rural and tribal areas and among the urban poor. She served for many years as adviser to the Indonesian Ministry of Finance and to Bank Rakyat Indonesia (BRI) on the development of BRI’s microbanking system—now the largest financially self-sufficient microfinance system in the world. She also works in other countries in Asia, and in Africa and Latin America, advising governments, banks, microfinance organizations becoming regulated, donors, and others. The author of many papers and books on development and microfinance, Dr. Robinson also has extensive teaching and public speaking experience. The first two volumes of a four-volume series, The Microfinance Revolution, have been published by the World Bank and Open Society Institute. The two additional volumes are in progress. These volumes explore and analyze the demand for microfinance and the history, theories, controversies, practices, and future of the emerging commercial microfinance industry in countries and institutions around the world. Dr. Robinson is a Director of the MasterCard Foundation, the Boulder Institute of Microfinance, and the Equity Bank Foundation.
Reeta Roy Reeta Roy is President and CEO of The MasterCard Foundation, an independent, private foundation based in Toronto, Canada with assets over $1 billion. Its vision is to make the economy work for everybody by advancing effective and innovative programs in the areas of microfinance and youth education. Ms. Roy is on the board of the Global Health Council, the world’s largest membership alliance dedicated to saving lives by improving health throughout the world. She is also a member of the United Nations Association of the USA. Ms. Roy received a Master of Arts in Law and Diplomacy from The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, and a Bachelor of Arts from St. Andrews Presbyterian College.
Julie Schaffner Julie Schaffner is Visiting Associate Professor of International Economics at the Fletcher School. Her teaching focuses on skills required for analytical, evidence-based involvement in poverty reduction and development efforts. She is currently writing a textbook on economic development for Wiley-Blackwell, which emphasizes the practical ways in which theory, empirical research and policy analytic thinking may contribute to the effective design and comprehensive evaluation of development programs and strategies. Professor Schaffner is currently involved in the early stages of a microfinance impact evaluation project, and was previously on the faculty in the Economics Department at Stanford University, where she also served as Deputy Director of the Center for Research on Economic Development and Policy Reform. She has consulted for the World Bank and UNESCO. She received her Ph.D. in economics from Yale University.
Cheyanne
Scharbatke-Church		 Cheyanne Scharbatke-Church teaches Introduction to Evaluation of Peacebuilding & Development, Advanced Evaluation Concepts and a seminar on Post-conflict Corruption at The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy. She has been involved in peacebuilding research and practice around the world with specific geographic expertise in West Africa, the Balkans, and Northern Ireland. She is currently the West Africa Liaison for the Reflecting on Peace Practice (RPP) project of Collaborative for Development Action (CDA), which seeks to improve the effectiveness of peace practice. In this role, Ms. Scharbatke-Church has been an advisor to the United Nations Mission in Liberia and has worked with a number of peacebuilding agencies in Liberia. She also works as an independent consultant predominately on evaluations ‘in’ and ‘on’ conflict issues for a wide range of organisations such as the International Committee of the Red Cross, CARE International and the United Nations. She has published on evaluation and peacebuilding, single identity work, and policy impact on conflict issues.
Hans Dieter Seibel Hans Dieter Seibel is a professor emeritus at Cologne University, a senior fellow at the Development Research Center (ZEF) of the University of Bonn and a member of the Consultative Committee of the Common Fund for Commodities. He is specialized on rural & microfinance, SHGs as financial intermediaries, SHG-bank linkages and agricultural development bank reform. He did his first survey research on SHGs in Liberia in 1967/68, followed by studies and projects in various countries in Africa, Asia and the Near East. In 1988-91 he was team leader of Linking Banks and Self-Help Groups in Indonesia, a joint project of GTZ and the central bank of Indonesia which has also served as a model for the SHG banking program of NABARD in India. In 1999-2001 he was Rural Finance Advisor at IFAD in Rome and author of its Rural Finance Policy.
Tom Shaw Tom Shaw is the Senior Technical Advisor for Microfinance in CRS’ Program Quality and Support Department. Mr. Shaw has spent over 30 years living and working overseas, primarily in Africa. With extensive experience in delivering high quality technical services to rural finance institutions, savings and credit cooperatives, stand alone microfinance institutions, and formal non-bank financial institutions, Mr. Shaw has focused primarily on market-based approaches to financial service provision and high-quality performance standards, using materials that bring understanding and competency through step-by-step learning and practical application. He has developed and implemented training programs in financial management and accounting, delinquency management, development and implementation of savings and credit products and methodologies, governance, legal framework, operations management, value chain analysis, and human resource management. Developing systems and manuals for second-tier institutional networks, Mr. Shaw has provided support to create two national practitioner networks in Africa. Mr. Shaw has a Masters degree in Agricultural Economics from Ohio State University’s Rural Finance Department, with a specialization in rural finance and banking.
N. Srinivasan Narasimhan Srinivasan has more than 30 years of involvement in financial sector in India, including five years with the Central Bank (RBI) and 24 years with Apex rural development bank (NABARD). He left NABARD from a senior position (chief general manager) to take up a consulting practice, which provides services to World Bank, CGAP, IFAD, UNDP, UNOPS, ADB, GTZ, Microsave, and the Government of India. He is involved in many significant initiatives in rural finance; institutional development and strengthening; product development, training, and capacity building; design, implementation, and supervision of rural development projects; and financing of rural infrastructure. He managed a portfolio of $ 900 million in development finance in one of the largest provinces in India and led a program linking more than 200000 SHGs to the banking system within a three-year period in the Maharashtra province of India. He has been part of many important policy making efforts, such as an expert group on farmers’ indebtedness, an expert group on reform of cooperative banking, the planning commission task force for estimation of agricultural credit flow, the technical committee on restructuring of cooperative sugar mills, and the technical group on revamp of supervision over rural financial institutions.
Kathleen Stack Kathleen Stack, Vice President, Program Development at Freedom from Hunger, holds a Master of Arts degree in International Administration from the School for International Training Graduate Institute and a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology from Clark University. She has more than 30 years of experience in international development with expertise in program design, strategic business planning, microfinance, curriculum design and training of trainers, and fund development. She has consulted for and trained microfinance organizations and NGOs in Asia, Africa and Latin America. Ms. Stack is one of the co-creators of the Credit with Education methodology and developed the strategy for linking Credit with Education to credit unions. More recently she contributed to the design of Saving for Change, a joint program with Oxfam America to support savings-led microfinance. She currently coordinates strategic planning efforts for Freedom from Hunger. Ms. Stack also serves on the Steering Committee of the Global Financial Education Program (GFEP), a joint program of Microfinance Opportunities and Freedom from Hunger. She was a founding member of the Small Enterprise Education and Promotion (SEEP) Network and served on the SEEP Board of Directors, and has been an instructor at the University of Southern New Hampshire’s Microenterprise Development Institute. Ms. Stack speaks fluent French.
Guy Stuart Guy Stuart is a Lecturer in Public Policy at Harvard’s Kennedy School. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 1994 and then worked for four years in Chicago in the field of community economic development. During this time he served as the Director of the FaithCorp Fund, a nonprofit community loan fund. At the Kennedy School he teaches courses on management and microfinance. His book Discriminating Risk traces the historical origins of today's mortgage loan underwriting criteria in the United States and examines current underwriting practices. He is currently conducting research on racial and economic segregation in the United States and on microfinance in India, Mexico, and Malawi.
Michael Swack Michael Swack is a professor at the University of New Hampshire where he has appointments at the Carsey Insitute and at the Whittemore School of Business and Economics. He has over 25 years experience in the fields of economic development, finance and development banking. Dr. Swack was the founder and former Dean of the School of Community Economic Development (CED) at Southern New Hampshire University. He has been involved in the design, implementation and management of a number community development lending and investment institutions both inside and outside the United States. He was the first Chairman and served for 17 years as a board member of the New Hampshire Community Development Finance Authority (CDFA), a state-chartered equity fund for community economic development ventures and projects. He is the founding president and a current board member of the New Hampshire Community Loan Fund. He was a founding board member of the National Association of Community Development Loan Funds (now the Opportunity Finance Network), a trade association of Community Development Finance Institutions, and a current member of the Community Development Advisory Council of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston. Internationally he has been involved in development finance and microfinance work in Africa, Asia and Latin America. Dr. Swack has published in the areas of economic development and development finance. He received his doctorate from Columbia University, his master’s degree from Harvard University and his bachelor’s degree from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Veronica Torres Veronica Torres is with Save the Children and has more than 12 years of experience supporting initiatives in formal and informal livelihoods opportunities for young people in over 20 countries. Skilled in qualitative assessment and evaluation techniques, Ms. Torres has worked with large microfinance institutions such as PROMUJER in Bolivia and Fondation Zakoura in Morocco in the design and implementation of both financial and non financial services for young people living in urban areas. She has also helped adapt group based savings and lending mechanisms for young people in rural Malawi and for girls in villages of Bangladesh.
Guy Vanmeenen Guy Vanmeenen is Catholic Relief Services’ Senior Technical Advisor for Microfinance in Africa. In this role, he provides strategic leadership and technical guidance to staff and partners across Africa who are implementing the agency’s microfinance strategy. Guy is responsible for strengthening the capabilities of CRS and partner staff, reviewing and adapting best practices in rural finance, and working with the regional team to integrate microfinance activities into other CRS programs. In addition, he developed CRS’ Savings and Internal Lending Communities (SILC) model and supported its roll-out in more than 20 African countries. Mr. Vanmeenen joined CRS in April 1996 as Microfinance Program Manager in Lebanon. In August 1998, he became Regional Technical Advisor for microfinance in East Africa, later adding the West Africa region and eventually supporting CRS’ microfinance activities across the continent. During this time, he helped the agency to develop its strategic framework for microfinance through 2010. Previously, Mr. Vanmeenen worked for the United Nations Industrial Development Organization in Morocco, where he helped the government support private sector development through policy initiatives and by promoting activities such as small enterprise development and solar technology. He also has experience in both exporting and sales. Fluent in Dutch, French and English, Mr. Vanmeenen grew up in Keerbergen in Northeast Belgium. He holds a Master’s of Science in Applied Economy from Belgium’s Katholieke Universiteit Leuven.
Peter Walker After more than 25 years of field work in humanitarian crises around the world, Dr. Peter Walker was appointed in 2002 as the Director of the Feinstein International Center at Tufts University. At the Center he leads a team of 30 academics and practitioners working on policy and practice issues in the fields of humanitarian action, human security and human rights. In 2007, Dr. Walker was made Rosenberg Professor of Nutrition and Human Security, and in 2008 he received the American College of Nutrition’s annual Humanitarian Award.
Kim Wilson Kim Wilson is a lecturer at The Fletcher School and a Fellow with the Center for Emerging Market Enterprises and the Feinstein International Center at Tufts University. Spending time in India beginning in 2001 through 2005, Professor Wilson worked closely with savings groups, connecting them to banks with a particular focus on tribal areas. She has worked for Catholic Relief Services heading their Microfinance Unit, and in that tenure, spearheaded CRS' shift from focusing on credit to the poor to savings of the poor. Professor Wilson has consulted for many international agencies in savings and credit. Previously, she was in the private sector, occupying senior management positions in finance and franchising.