William M. Abrams
Trickle Up
William M. Abrams has served as President of Trickle Up since 2005, following a career as a senior executive and journalist for The New York Times, ABC News and The Wall Street Journal.
Mr. Abrams has Masters degrees in journalism and business from Columbia University and a Bachelors degree from Tufts University. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and has represented Trickle Up at numerous conferences, including the Clinton Global Initiative.
Founded in 1979, Trickle Up empowers people living on less than $1.25 a day to take the first steps out of poverty.
Working through a network of 60 community partner organizations, Trickle Up provides business training, seed capital
grants, and savings support to very people in Mali, Burkina Faso, India, Guatemala, and Nicaragua who are living
on less than $1/day. This year Trickle Up will support the launch or expansion of approximately 10,000 businesses,
benefitting more than 50,000 people.
Tania Alfonso
Innovations for Poverty Action
Tania Alfonso joined IPA as Country Director for Peru in May 2007, where she managed the design, implementation,
and analysis of microfinance, health, value chain development, and education studies in Peru and Ecuador. She moved
to Washington, DC in January 2010 to become IPA’s Training Director, in charge of capacity building for internal staff
and for partner organizations. Prior to joining IPA, she directed the evaluation of an education project in Guatemala
and worked as a consultant in the area of risk management and capacity building for the Inter-American Development
Bank in Washington, DC. She holds a Masters in International Affairs from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced
International Studies, where she is also an adjunct professor, and a BA from Yale University.
Santosh Anagol
Wharton School
Santosh Anagol is an Assistant Professor in the Business and Public Policy Department at Wharton. His research
focuses on financial market issues in emerging markets. One recent project studies how the regulation of fees has
shaped the Indian mutual fund industry. Another studies the behavior of life insurance agents and how they respond to
changes in regulatory policy. His dissertation studied inefficiencies in the Indian market for dairy cows and buffaloes,
which are commonly purchased by microfinance borrowers. He teaching focuses on the effects of economic regulation
on business. He received his PhD from Yale University in 2009 and his undergraduate degree from Stanford in 2002,
and was a Fulbright Scholar to India in 2002-2003.
Raymond Anderson
Standard Bank Group, South Africa
Raymond Anderson is a Canadian (Medicine Hat) living in Johannesburg for 30 years, and has worked for Standard
Bank that entire period. He did a BComm in Calgary (1980) and MBA at Wits (1991). His first exposure to credit scoring
was programming a vehicle finance scorecard into a calculator in 1982, but then spent 13 years in Project Finance as
a computer programmer and financial modelling. He moved to Credit Division in 1996, and has been involved in all
aspects of credit scoring as it evolved. His book, The Credit Scoring Toolkit, was published by Oxford University Press
in 2007, after three years in the writing. He is currently the Head of Scoring for Standard Bank Africa, covering the
sub-Saharan Africa outside South Africa. Mr. Anderson is married, has a passion for travel, and enjoys writing, 4x4ing,
scuba diving, the arts, and the occasional (hiccup!) whisky.
Bernd Balkenhol
International Labor Organization
Bernd Balkenhol directs the ILO’s Social Finance Program (SFP), which observes, records and evaluates initiatives
to use financial instruments and institutions for decent work. The focus is on innovations in finance that create jobs,
help manage risk and organize the poor. Prior to this Bernd served as technical advisor to the central bank of West
African States (BCEAO) on SME financing. In that framework he helped develop a course for the central bank’s training
institute COFEB on commercial bank financing of African SMEs. This led to the publication by Harmattan of 16 case
studies on small enterprise finance in Africa. He holds a PhD from Freiburg University in Germany and a MA from the
Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy (Medford, Mass.) He lectures at the Geneva Institute of Development Studies
and the University of Geneva. His latest book (“Microfinance and Public Policy”, Palgrave Macmillan) reviews the
conditions for smart subsidies to microfinance institutions. He has served on the Executive Committee of CGAP and is
Founding President of the Swiss Microfinance Platform.
Abhijit Vinayak Banerjee
MIT, Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab, Innovations for Poverty Action
Abhijit Vinayak Banerjee was educated at the University of Calcutta, Jawaharlal Nehru University and Harvard
University, where he received his Ph.D in 1988. He is currently the Ford Foundation International Professor of
Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In 2003 he founded the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action
Lab (J-PAL), along with Esther Duflo and Sendhil Mullainathan and remains one of the directors of the lab. In 2009
J-PAL won the BBVA Foundation “Frontier of Knowledge” award in the development cooperation category. Banerjee is
a past president of the Bureau for the Research in the Economic Analysis of Development, a Research Associate of the
NBER, a CEPR research fellow, International Research Fellow of the Kiel Institute, a fellow of the American Academy
of Arts and Sciences and the Econometric Society and has been a Guggenheim Fellow and an Alfred P. Sloan Fellow.
J-PAL received the inaugural BBVA Frontiers of Knowledge Award for world-class research, and Professor Banerjee
received the Infosys Prize 2009 in Social Sciences and Economics. His areas of research are development economics
and economic theory. He has authored two books as well as a large number of articles and is the editor of a third book.
He finished his first documentary film, “The Name of the Disease” in 2006.
Kathryn Barrios
Developing World Markets
Kathryn is Managing Director and Chief Credit Officer of Developing World Markets. Her grass roots involvement in
economic development began as an Urban Community Development volunteer in the USA Peace Corps in Panama City,
Panama. Believing that access to finance is critical and that the private sector can be more effective than top down aid,
she embarked upon a thirty-year commercial banking career that spanned both Latin America and the USA. In Brazil,
during the turbulence of the hyper-inflationary years, as Deputy Credit Officer with the Chase Manhattan Bank, she
ran a team of 20 analysts exercising credit authority over a portfolio of 300 Brazilian accounts. With S&P, after giving
the initial push to rate dollar denominated offshore bonds of Brazilian blue chip corporations, she set up S&P’s Brazil
office to further the development of a transparent local currency bond market. Other accomplishments include running
a major retail branch of Chase Manhattan in NYC, obtaining “Branch Manager of the Year”, setting up the Stamford,
CT office of a women’s Not-For-Profit to provide training for women entrepreneurs, and running Credit and Market
Risk Management in NYC for BBVA, a major Spanish bank with regulatory challenges in its NYC operation. Kathryn
has a BA in International Relations from Pomona College, and a Master’s in International Management from the
Thunderbird School of Global Management. She is fluent in Spanish and Portuguese.
Jonathan Bauchet
NYU Wagner, Financial Access Institute
Jonathan is a Ph.D. candidate in the Wagner School of Public Service at New York University, focusing on international development policy and microfinance. Prior to that, he worked with Innovations for Poverty Action in South Africa, the
Philippines, and the United States, managing randomized field experiments, implementing surveys, and conducting
data analysis. He has a Master’s degree in Sustainable International Development from Brandeis University and a BA
degree in Economics, Management, and Law from Université Paris II, France.
Tanguy Bernard
Agence Française de Développement
Tanguy Bernard joined the Evaluation Unit of the Agence Française de Développement (AFD) in 2008. His work
primarily involves the identification of impact evaluation opportunities within AFD’s project portfolio, the set-up
of adequate research team, and the follow-up and dissemination of the studies’ results. He is also in charge of a
capitalization exercise on the role that impact evaluations can play from a bilateral donor’s perspective. Tanguy is an
economist by training, with extensive experience in empirical work in subsaharan Africa. Before joining AFD he was a
research fellow at the International Food Policy Research Institute.
Carlos Danel
Compartamos Banco
Carlos Danel is Executive Vice President and Co-Founder of Compartamos Banco, one of the largest microfinance
institutions in Latin America, serving low-income microentrepreneurs (mostly women) with financial services based
around working capital loans. Mr. Danel is a frequent speaker in conferences and seminars, and a teacher in specialized
courses. He was nominated a Global Leader for Tomorrow in 2002 and later named a Young Global Leader by the
Forum of Young Global Leaders at the World Economic Forum. Carlos is also an active thinker and investor in other
base of the pyramid business approaches and is a General Partner at Ignia Partners LLC. He also serves on the board of
Compartamos Banco, Progresso Financiero in California, Vista Desarrollos, Grupo CP and non-profit VIFAC A.C. Mr.
Danel holds a degree in Architecture from the Universidad Iberoamericana, an MBA from the IPADE, and is a Private
Pilot and aviation enthusiast.
Susan Davis
BRAC USA
Ms. Davis is a thought leader in international development and civil society innovation and co-author with David
Bornstein of Social Entrepreneurship: What Everyone Needs to Know. She is the founding President & CEO of BRAC
USA, a grantmaking affiliate of BRAC, an international development organization started in Bangladesh in 1972 and
now working in 10 countries. She is currently on the governing boards of BRAC and BRAC International and serves as
chair for BRAC Sierra Leone and Liberia microfinance companies. In addition she was a founding board member and
Chair of the Grameen Foundation and is a current board member. Since its inception, Ms. Davis has served as a Senior
Advisor to New York University’s Reynolds Program on Social Entrepreneurship. Previously she led Ashoka’s Global
Academy for Social Entrepreneurship, co-founded the University Network for Social Entrepreneurship and oversaw
Ashoka’s expansion to the Middle East, North Africa and Central Asia. She serves on Ashoka’s international board
committee and formerly served as a Senior Advisor to the Director General of the International Labor Organization.
Prior to that, she led the global advocacy group, Women’s Environment & Development Organization, and worked with
Ford Foundation in Bangladesh and Women’s World Banking. She serves on numerous other boards and was educated
at Georgetown, Harvard and
Oxford universities.
Hans Dellien
Women’s World Banking
Mr. Dellien is the Director of Microfinance Products and Services at Women’s World Banking. He coordinates the
technical services to micro finance institutions in Africa, Asia, Middle East and Latin America. Mr. Dellien also has
provided strategic advice to commercial banks in Mexico, China and India. Prior to joining WWB in 1998, Mr. Dellien
worked 5 years for (IPC) based in Frankfurt. Mr. Dellien has a master degree in Agricultural Economics from OSU.
Esther Duflo
MIT, Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab, Innovations for Poverty Action
Esther Duflo is Abdul Latif Jameel Professor of Poverty Alleviation and Development Economics in the Department of
Economics at MIT and a founder and director of the Jameel Poverty Action Lab. Duflo is an NBER Research Associate,
serves on the board of the Bureau for Research and Economic Analysis of Development (BREAD), and is Director of
the Center of Economic Policy Research’s development economics program. She serves as the founding editor of the
AEJ applied. Her research focuses on microeconomic issues in developing countries, including household behavior,
education, access to finance, health and policy evaluation.
Duflo has received numerous academic honors and prizes including a John Bates Clark Medal (2010), a MacArthur
Fellowship (2009) and the American Economic Association’s Elaine Bennett Prize for Research (2003). She was the
2008-2009 inaugural holder of the international chair “Knowledge Against Poverty” at the College de France.
Chris Dunford
Freedom from Hunger
Chris Dunford has over 30 years of rural development experience in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the United States.
He joined Freedom from Hunger in 1984 as Director, Arizona Programs and then became Regional Director, U.S.
Programs; Director, International Operations; and Vice President for Programs prior to becoming President. Chris
was co-creator of the Credit with Education methodology and now provides organizational leadership and speaks and
writes for international audiences on the impacts of microfinance for the chronically hungry poor, on measurement
and management toward social objectives, and on integration of microfinance with lifeskills education and health
protection. Before joining Freedom from Hunger, Chris worked for the U.N. Environment Program in Kenya and
then for USAID contractors in Tanzania, Botswana, Egypt, Cote d’Ivoire, and the Sudan. Chris has a PhD in ecology
(University of Arizona in Tucson) and a BS in biological sciences (Cornell University).
Tilman Ehrbeck
Consultative Group to Assist the Poor
Tilman Ehrbeck is CEO of the Consultative Group to Assist the Poor (CGAP), an independent policy and research center dedicated to advancing financial access for the world’s poor. It is supported by over 30 development agencies and private foundations who share a common mission to alleviate poverty. Housed at the World Bank, CGAP provides market intelligence, promotes standards, develops innovative solutions and offers advisory services to governments, microfinance providers, donors and investors.
Prior to CGAP, Tilman was a Partner with the global management consulting firm McKinsey & Company, where he
held a series of leadership positions in the firm’s Banking & Securities and Healthcare Payor & Provider Practices as
well as its Indian Operations. Over the past 10 years, he has advised a number of governments, microfinance networks, foundations, and commercial players on a broad range of financial inclusion issues. Tilman holds a Ph.D. in Economics
from the European University Institute (EUI), the graduate school and research center sponsored by the European
Union and an undergraduate degree from the University of Hamburg.
Erica Field
Harvard University and National Bureau of Economic Research, Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab
Erica Field is an Associate Professor of Economics at Harvard University specializing in the fields of Development Economics and Economic Demography. She is also a research economist at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) and the Bureau for Research in the Economic Analysis of Development (BREAD).
Professor Field’s work examines the microeconomics of household poverty in developing countries, and much of her
research employs field experiments to evaluate development policy. Her work has been published in several leading
peer-reviewed journals, including the Quarterly Journal of Economics, Journal of Political Economy and the American
Economic Journal. As a member of the Abdul Latif Jamaal Poverty Action Lab at MIT, much of her research uses field
experiments to evaluate development policy and understand individual behavior. Professor Field received her Ph.D.
from Princeton University and her B.A. from Vassar College. Prior to joining the Economics Department at Harvard in
2005, she was a Robert Wood Johnson Health Policy Scholar at Harvard. Field is currently an Alfred P. Sloan Research
Fellow. In 2007, she was a member of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, NJ, and in 1996-1998 she was a
Fulbright Fellow in Peru.
Greg Fischer
London School of Economics, Innovations for Poverty Action, Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab
Greg Fischer is a Lecturer (Assistant Professor) at the London School of Economics, Co-Director for the finance
program at the International Growth Centre, and a board member of IPA. He is a graduate of Princeton University
and received his Ph.D in 2008 from MIT. He also has ten years experience in the investment and banking sector with
Centre Partners Management and Morgan Stanley Capital Partners. He is the recipient of several awards and grants,
including the Economic and Social Research Council’s First Grant (2009-2012), the Robert M. Solow Prize (2008),
the Small Grant in Behavioral Economics from Russell Sage Foundation (2007), the National Science Foundation’s
Graduate Research Fellowship (2005-2008) and MIT’s Presidential Fellowship (2003-2005). He is also a member
of the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab, the Economic Organization and Public Policy Programme, STICERD
at LSE, and an affiliate of CEPR and BREAD. His research focuses on finance, firms, and markets in less developed
countries.
Xavier Gine
World Bank, Innovations for Poverty Action
Xavier Gine is a Senior Economist in the Finance and Private Sector Development Team of the Development Research
Group. Since joining the Bank as a Young Economist in 2002, his research has focused on access to financial services
and rural financial markets. In recent papers he investigated the macroeconomic effects of a credit liberalization;
the relationship between formal and informal sources of credit in rural credit markets; indigenous interlinked credit
contracts in the fishing industry and the impact of weather insurance. Prior to joining the Bank he was a postdoctoral
fellow and lecturer at the Economic Growth Center at Yale University. He holds an MA and a Ph.D. in Economics from
the University of Chicago.
Nathanael Goldberg
Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA)
IPA is a non-profit organization dedicated to creating, evaluating, and replicating innovative solutions to development problems. He leads IPA’s efforts to disseminate research findings and direct resources to proven development interventions. Nathanael also manages evaluations related to financial inclusion, including Targeting the Ultra Poor/Microfinance Graduation pilots designed to enable the poorest households to participate in entrepreneurship.
Previously he served as chief of staff of the Microcredit Summit Campaign where he supervised industry-wide data
collection and led the organization of major industry conferences including the 2002 Microcredit Summit +5 in New
York. Nathanael has a B.A. in economics from Wesleyan University and a Master in Public Affairs in International
Development from Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School, where he teaches a graduate course on
microfinance.
Linda Huber
Moody’s Corporation
Ms. Huber has executive responsibility for the corporation’s global finance activities, including accounting and financial reporting, tax, treasury, business planning, investor relations and internal audit. She is also responsible for Moody’s information technology, communications and middle office functions.
Prior to joining Moody’s, Ms. Huber was Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer at U.S. Trust Company, a subsidiary of Charles Schwab & Company, Inc., from 2003 to 2005. Previously, she was Managing Director at Freeman & Co. from 1998 through 2002.
Ms. Huber served PepsiCo as Vice President of Corporate Strategy and Development from 1997 until 1998, and as Vice President and Assistant Treasurer from 1994 until 1997. From 1991 until 1994, Ms. Huber was a Vice President in the Energy Investment Banking Group at Bankers Trust Company, and was an Associate in the Energy Group at The First Boston Corporation from 1986 through 1990.
Ms. Huber held the rank of Captain in the U.S. Army, where she served from 1980 to 1984. During her years of military service, she received two Meritorious Service Medals and is airborne qualified.
Ms. Huber holds an MBA from Stanford Graduate School of Business and a B.S. (with high honors) in business and
economics from Lehigh University.
Michael Ingram
Innovations for Poverty Action
Mike Ingram is the Director of Innovation for Poverty Action’s new Small & Medium Enterprise Initiative. In this
capacity, Mike will be guiding the development of the program, including: research agenda, fundraising, operations
management, and partner network development. Prior to joining Innovations for Poverty Action, he worked as a Lead
Associate within Booz Allen Hamilton’s Diplomacy & International Development team overseeing USAID’s flagship
business enabling environment program (BizCLIR). Mike has also consulted for the World Bank, International
Finance Corporation, and the Center for Global Development analyzing constraints to private sector growth and issues
of informality in Sub-Saharan Africa. Earlier in his career, Mike worked in the retail financial services sector, as a
consultant for Accenture. Mike holds a Master in Public Policy degree from Georgetown University, and a BA from
Davidson College.
Mary Ellen Iskenderian
President and CEO of Women’s World Banking
Mary Ellen Iskenderian is President and CEO of Women’s World Banking (WWB), the world’s largest network of
microfinance institutions and banks. Ms. Iskenderian joined WWB in 2006 and leads the WWB global team, based in
New York. Prior to WWB, Ms. Iskenderian worked for 17 years at the International Finance Corporation, the private
sector arm of the World Bank. Before, she worked for the investment bank Lehman Brothers. Ms. Iskenderian serves on
the Board of Directors of Kashf Microfinance Bank in Pakistan and is a permanent member of the Council on Foreign
Relations. She was a topic leader in the area of “Empowering Girls and Women” for the 2010 Clinton Global Initiative
annual meeting. Ms. Iskenderian holds an MBA from the Yale School of Management and a Bachelor of Science in
International Economics from Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service.
Dean Karlan
Yale University, President of Innovations for Poverty Action, Co-Director of the Financial Access Initiative,
Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab
Dean Karlan is a professor of economics at Yale University. Karlan is also president of Innovations for Poverty Action
(IPA), co-director of the Financial Access Initiative, a consortium created with funding from the Bill and Melissa
Gates Foundation, a research fellow of the M.I.T. Jameel Poverty Action Lab, and co-founder and president of StickK.
com. In 2007, he received a Presidential Early Career Award for scientists and engineers. In 2008, he received an
Alfred P. Sloan research fellowship. His research focuses on microeconomic issues of financial decision-making,
specifically employing experimental methodologies to examine what works, what does not, and why in interventions in
microfinance and health. Internationally, he focuses on microfinance, and domestically, he focuses on voting, charitable
giving, and commitment contracts. In microfinance, he has studied interest rate policy, credit evaluation and scoring
policies, entrepreneurship training, group versus individual liability, savings product design, credit with education,
and impact from increased access to credit. His work on savings and health typically uses insights from psychology
and behavioral economics to design and test specialized products. He has consulted for the World Bank, the Asian
Development Bank, FINCA International, Oxfam, Freedom from Hunger and the Guatemalan government. Karlan
received a PhD in economics from M.I.T., a MBA and a MPP from the University of Chicago, and a BA in international
affairs from the University of Virginia.
Jake Kendall
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
Jake Kendall is a Program Officer on the Financial Services for the Poor team’s Policy and Research initiative. His
work focuses on developing and coordinating FSP’s research strategy and managing FSP’s academic research grants.
Previous to joining the Foundation, he spent time as an Economist with the Consultative Group to Assist the Poor
(CGAP) a microfinance think tank housed in the World Bank. Jake holds a PhD in Economics from UC Santa Cruz and
a BS in Physics from MIT. After graduating from MIT he volunteered for two years in Zambia as a fisheries extension
agent with the US Peace Corps. Jake has also worked as a Brand Analyst for a major advertising firm, a project manager
for two high tech start ups, and – throughout his youth – as a salmon fisherman in Alaska.
Asim Ijaz Khwaja
Harvard University, Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab
Asim Ijaz Khwaja is Professor of Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. His areas of interest
include economic development, finance, education, political economy, institutions, and contract theory/mechanism
design. His research combines extensive fieldwork, rigorous empirical analysis, and microeconomic theory to answer
12 questions that are motivated by and engage with policy. It has been published in the leading economics journals, such as
the American Economic Review, and the Quarterly Journal of Economics, and has received coverage in numerous media
outlets such as the Economist, NY Times, Washington Post, International Herald Tribune, Al-Jazeera, BBC, and CNN. His
recent work ranges from understanding market failures in emerging financial markets to examining the private education
market in low-income countries. He is the PI of the Entrepreneurial Finance Lab at Harvard www.cid.harvard.edu/eflri.
Khwaja received BS degrees in economics and in mathematics with computer science from MIT and a PhD in economics
from Harvard.
Joanna Ledgerwood
Aga Khan Foundation
Joanna Ledgerwood joined the Aga Khan Foundation in 2007 and leads their Access to Finance activities from the
Head Office in Geneva. Prior to moving to Geneva, Ms. Ledgerwood spent six years in Kampala Uganda providing
support to MFIs to become regulated deposit-taking institutions and to the Central Bank of Uganda to supervise micro
deposit taking institutions. Before Uganda, she spent two years in the Philippines working with rural banks to deepen
their outreach to the poor. A Canadian, Ms. Ledgerwood spent eight years as a microfinance consultant in Africa, Asia,
and Latin America before moving abroad. She has written numerous papers and books, including Transforming MFIs
with Victoria White (2006) and the Microfinance Handbook (1998), both published by the World Bank. She is currently
working on the New Microfinance Handbook.
Barbara Magnoni
EA Consultants
Ms. Magnoni is President of EA Consultants. An international development advisor with over 15 years international
finance and development experience, she has an extensive background in financial market financing and investments,
having worked on Wall Street for seven years. Since 2000, she has been working on development issues, primarily
related to access to finance, markets and social protection. In 2007, she managed a large scale randomized evaluation
of the impact and effectiveness of a project to extend Nicaraguan Social Security health insurance to the informal
sector. Recently, she advised INISER, Nicaragua’s largest insurance company in the development of a strategy for
microinsurance. Ms. Magnoni is also working with FOSIS, a government agency in Chile to develop a strategy to build a
private microinsurance market. She most recently led a study for Inter-American Development Bank on migrant linked
microinsurance in the United States, focusing on the Mexican community.
Asad Mahmood
Global Social Investment Funds, Deutsche Bank
Mr. Mahmood, Managing Director of the Global Social Investment Funds at Deutsche Bank, is responsible for an over
$500 million loan and investment portfolio which seeks both a financial and social return. He is responsible for DB’s
Microfinance efforts globally which comprise more than 85 relationships in 41 countries. He was the central force in
creating a pioneering $80 million commercial microfinance fund which has raised most of its money from 13 large
institutional investors in the world. He has partnered with Ashoka and International Association for the Prevention
of Blindness (IAPB) to create Eye Fund 1, a revolutionary fund that will lend to hospitals providing ophthalmology
services to the poor. Mr. Mahmood is positioning DB to be an investment bank for social capital and is looking to
be an innovator in the growth of financeable social ventures by bringing together differently motivated capital from
development agencies, foundations and socially motivated commercial investors.
Margaret McConnell
Harvard University
Margaret McConnell is a postdoctoral research fellow at Harvard’s Center for Population and Development Studies. She
received her PhD from the California Institute of Technology in 2009. Her primary research agenda is to understand
what motivates individuals to save for the future and invest in health. She designs field experiments that test
economic models of psychology and social interactions, providing insight into whether policies designed to encourage
investments in savings and health are effective and why.
Michael J. McCord
MicroInsurance Centre, LLC
Michael J. McCord, the President of the MicroInsurance Centre, LLC, has over fifteen years of microinsurance experience. He conducts numerous workshops and training events and works extensively to build effective microinsurance partnerships between commercial organizations and a variety of delivery channels. He strives to develop better products and processes, and to improve access to high quality MI for masses of low-income people around the world, thus creating win-win-win solutions for all stakeholders.
Michael combines experience as controller of a US commercial bank, CEO of an MFI in Uganda, Regional Director for
microfinance programs in Africa, and now President of the MicroInsurance Centre, to provide a depth of knowledge on
developing and managing microinsurance products and understanding the capacities of both the commercial insurers
and delivery channels. His specializations include institutional development, product development, and assessment
and analysis of microinsurance programs.
Kate McKee
Consultative Group to Assist the Poor
Kate McKee joined CGAP (the global microfinance resource center) in September 2006 as Senior Policy Advisor. She
leads CGAP’s work on consumer protection issues in microfinance, including analysis of policy/regulatory options for
consumer protection and market conduct regulation in low-access markets. She has also led CGAP work on responsible
finance (including industry standards for improved client protection), savings, state-owned banks, and other topics
relevant to financial inclusion. From 1998-2006 Kate served as Director of the Microenterprise Development office at
the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), leading support to USAID overseas programs that
invest over $200 million annually in 70+ countries. From 1986-98 Kate was a senior manager with Self-Help in North
Carolina, the largest Community Development Financial Institution (CDFI) in the U.S. She led the start-up of a new
government CDFI Fund, which invests in CDFIs and provide incentives for mainstream financial institutions to boost
community development lending. Kate also worked for the Ford Foundation in its headquarters and West Africa field
office. Kate is a development economist, with a Masters in Public and International Affairs from Princeton University.
She chaired the Consumer Advisory Council of the U.S. Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve.
David McKenzie
World Bank, Innovations for Poverty Action
David McKenzie is a Senior Economist in the World Bank’s Development Research Group. Prior to joining the
World Bank in 2005, he was assistant professor of Economics at Stanford University (2001-05). He received
his B.Com(Hons)/B.A. from the University of Auckland, New Zealand in 1997 and his Ph.D. in Economics from
Yale University in 2001. His specific areas of research interest include international migration, microenterprise
development, and improvements in methodology for working with data from developing countries. He is the author of
14 over 50 published articles, and has carried out surveys and experiments in five continents. Current projects include an
evaluation of a large-scale seasonal worker migration program in the Pacific, experiments with firms in India, Sri Lanka
and Ghana, and evaluations of programs intended to improve job prospects in Jordan and Turkey.
Aude de Montesquiou
Consultative Group to Assist the Poor
Aude works on the CGAP-Ford Foundation Graduation Program, a global effort to understand how safety nets,
livelihoods, and microfinance can be sequenced to create pathways to help the poorest out of extreme poverty. In
close collaboration with project partners, Aude supports the overall coordination of the program, provides technical
support to pilot implementation and facilitates global knowledge and lessons sharing. Aude is also CGAP’s relationship
manager for the Microinsurance Network, a leading platform for insurers, funders, and academics to promote
valuable insurance products for the poor. Before joining CGAP, Aude completed internships with PlaNet Finance and
microfinance institutions in Lebanon and Togo. She holds a master’s degree Summa Cum Laude from The School of
Political Science in Paris, with a major in development studies, and a bachelor’s degree in history from the University of
La Sorbonne. Aude is fluent in English and French, speaks Portuguese and Spanish, and has rudimentary German.
Jonathan Morduch
Professor of Public Policy and Economics, NYU Wagner Graduate School of Public Service
Managing Director, Financial Access Initiative
As Managing Director of the FAI, a consortium of researchers focused on financial inclusion, his research centers on microfinance, social investment, and the economics of poverty. He is currently developing a theoretical framework with Jonathan Conning for understanding how governments and philanthropists can use market forces to create social change.
Morduch is co-author of Portfolios of the Poor: How the World’s Poor Live on $2 a Day (Princeton 2009) and The Economics of Microfinance (MIT Press 2005, 2nd edition 2010). He has taught on the Economics faculty at Harvard University, and has held visiting positions at Stanford, Princeton, and the University of Tokyo. Morduch has worked with the United Nations and World Bank, and advises global NGOs. He is Associate Editor of the Journal of Economic Perspectives and on the board of the Journal of Globalization and Development.
Morduch holds a BA from Brown and Ph.D. from Harvard, both in Economics. He was awarded an honorary doctorate
from the Université Libre de Bruxelles in December 2008 in recognition of his work on microfinance.
Adair Morse
University of Chicago
Adair Morse is Assistant Professor of Finance and James S. Kemper Foundation Faculty Scholar at the Booth School
of Business at the University of Chicago, where she teaches Entrepreneurial Finance and Private Equity. She earned a
Ph.D. in finance from the University of Michigan in 2007, masters degrees in statistics and agricultural economics from
Purdue University, and a B.A. in Middle Eastern studies from Colgate University. Prior to entering academia, Morse
worked in the resource management industry and was an entrepreneur in emerging Eastern Europe. Her main area of
research covers the interaction of individual financial decision making, financial services and well-being. In this area,
recent works look at the importance of disclosure and financial understanding in the household borrowing and the
disposition of federal stimulus check for the highly indebted. Prior work uses community outcomes following natural
disasters as a laboratory to study role of payday loans for those in
financial distress.
Sendhil Mullainathan
Harvard University, Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab, Innovations for Poverty Action
Sendhil Mullainathan is a Professor of Economics at Harvard University and Director of ideas42, a center devoted to taking insights about people from behavioral economics and using it to create novel policies, interventions, and products. He is also a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research, a Founding Member of the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab, and a Board Member of the Bureau of Research in the Economic Analysis of Development. He is a recipient of a MacArthur Foundation ‘genius grant.’
Professor Mullainathan conducts research on development economics, behavioral economics, and corporate finance.
He has published extensively in top economics journals including the American Economic Review, the Quarterly
Journal of Economics, and the Journal of Political Economy. In addition to being a MacArthur Fellow, Mullainathan
is the recipient of numerous grants and fellowships, including those from the National Science Foundation, the Olin
Foundation, the Sloan Foundation, and the Russell Sage Foundation.
Ross T. Nathan
Opportunity Tanzania Limited
Ross T. Nathan is Microfinance practitioner and Microfinance banker. He holds a Bachelors Degree in Commerce, from Bangalore University- St. Joseph’s College, India. Over the past 13 years, Ross has led microfinance institutions in six African countries, including setting up regulated microfinance Banks/institutions in India, Zambia and Rwanda. In these institutions Ross has led departments including savings and credit operations, marketing and business strategies, research and product development, risk management, finance and IT & MIS.
In August 2010, Ross joined Opportunity International Tanzania (OTL), as COO and Acting CFO. Ross moved to
Tanzania after setting up and serving Urwego Opportunity Bank Rwanda(UOB) in the capacity of COO over the past
five years. Ross played an instrumental role in transition management, capacity building, training and team building,
which led to Opportunity International Bank of Rwanda successfully merging with URWEGO MFI to form Urwego
Opportunity Bank.
Beth Porter
Policy Advisor, Financial Inclusion, United Nations Capital Development Fund
Ms. Beth Porter has over twenty years of experience in microfinance and organizational development in 30 countries
in Africa, Asia and Latin America. Ms. Porter is Policy Advisor at UNCDF where she provides policy guidance and
support to the global team on financial inclusion. She previously launched and directed the YFS-Link initiative at
Making Cents International to build the capabilities of financial services providers and youth-serving organizations in
youth-inclusive financial services. At Freedom from Hunger, Ms. Porter led program strategy and managed delivery
of integrated microfinance services to 1.2 million women and their families in 16 countries. Ms. Porter has provided
technical assistance and training in strategic and business planning, product design, and organizational effectiveness
and operational efficiency, and is experienced in program appraisal, design and evaluation. Ms. Porter is on the boards
of the SEEP Network, the Bolivian MFI CRECER, the SMART Campaign in Microfinance, and the YFS-Link initiative.
Jody Rasch
Moody's Investors Service
Jody Rasch has over 30 years experience in the financial markets. Mr. Rasch is currently works in Moody’s
Corporation’s Data Governance Group, where he analyzes various business opportunities including microfinance
and social investing. He also serves on the advisory board of the Global Impact Investing Rating Service (GIIRS). Mr.
16 Rasch heads a group at Moody’s that provides financial information on the corporations and financial institutions
rated by Moody’s. He began his career in the corporate treasury departments of two Fortune 500 companies. He also
worked in the derivatives group at Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce (CIBC) in New York. Mr. Rasch then founded
Financial Directions Inc., which provided financial training for investment and commercial banks in the U.S., Canada,
South America, Europe and Asia. The company was eventually acquired by Wide Learning Inc., a UK-based e-learning
company. Mr. Rasch holds a BA degree in economics from the University of Michigan and an MBA in finance from New
York University.
Michael Rauenhorst
Microequity Investors, LLC
Michael Rauenhorst is Managing Director of Microequity Investors, LLC, investing in microfinance, mobile technology
and sustainable enterprises worldwide. He previously served for 8 years with Deutsche Bank Global Social Investments,
helping to develop some of the first microfinance and social investment funds and originating social investments in
over 30 countries. Michael is co-founder of Jamicro Holdings, Jamaica’s largest independent microfinance provider.
He is Chair of Opus Prize Foundation which makes an annual $1 million award for faith-inspired entrepreneurship. He
is board member of the Global Commercial Microfinance Consortium and Deutsche Bank Microcredit Development
Fund. He is an advisor to Fonkoze (Haiti), ACCION Int’l and the Microcredit Foundation, Inc. Mr. Rauenhorst received
his M.B.A. from Columbia, and BA from the University of Notre Dame.
Jonathan Robinson
University of California, Santa Cruz, Innovations for Poverty Action, Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab
Jonathan Robinson is an assistant professor of economics at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and a research affiliate of IPA and J-PAL. His current research is focused on the effect of providing basic financial access to people in developing countries, and has included evaluations of a program to provide savings accounts to micro-entrepreneurs and a program which allowed farmers to commit to save harvest income for future fertilizer investment. His research also includes studies which examine the effect that risk (particularly health risk) has on the decisions that people make, and the effect that access to risk-coping mechanisms such as savings accounts have on these decisions. He received his Ph.D. from Princeton University in 2007.
David Roodman
Center for Global Development
David Roodman is a senior fellow at the Center for Global Development in Washington, DC. He is finishing a book on whether microfinance “works,” and what the answers to that question imply for how it should be supported. He writing in public, though an “open book” blog, posting draft chapters, questions, and discoveries.
Mr. Roodman has written on topics ranging from environmental taxes to third world debt. Foreign Affairs called his first book, The Natural Wealth of Nations, “required reading for legislators around the world.” He is 15th on the RePEc list of top young economists in the world.
Mr. Roodman graduated magna cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa, from Harvard College in 1990, majoring in mathematics.
A year later, he dropped out of a mathematics program at the University of Cambridge, failing all his exams and
inadvertently launching his current career. He spent 1998–99 on a Fulbright in Vietnam. He has never taken a course
in economics or statistics.
Richard Rosenberg
Consultative Group to Assist the Poor
After getting his law degree at Harvard, Richard Rosenberg practiced law and investment management in Chicago
and Washington. He spent 13 years working on development finance issues at USAID, including 9 years in Costa Rica
and Bolivia, ending his tenure there as Associate Assistant Administrator for the bureau responsible for private sector
programming, including microfinance. He has been a Senior Advisor at CGAP since its founding in 1995, producing
three dozen research and policy publications on various microfinance topics. He is a core faculty member of the
Boulder Institute’s annual Microfinance Training in Turin.
Ellen Schall
New York University’s Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service
Ellen Schall is Dean and Martin Cherkasky Professor of Health Policy & Management at New York University’s Robert
F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service. NYU Wagner is a top-ranked leadership school of public service, with
a faculty of thought leaders who reframe the way people understand and act on issues of public importance, and
graduates who are bold, well-prepared change makers who expertly navigate real-world complexity and produce
results that matter. Dean Schall began her career as a Legal Aid Society criminal defense attorney, and has served as
Commissioner of the NYC Department of Juvenile Justice. Her academic work focuses on leadership. She has extensive
experience in nonprofit management and governance, including more than 30 years of active membership on the board
of University Settlement House, and is an elected fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration. Dean Schall
received her B.A. from Swarthmore College and J.D. (cum laude) from NYU School of Law.
Rachel Schneider
Center for Financial Services Innovation
Rachel Schneider is the Innovation Director for the Center for Financial Services Innovation. In this position, Ms. Schneider serves as an industry expert on the underbanked, identifying new innovations and documenting trends. She coordinates relationships with academic and industry research partners to ensure that CFSI’s research is timely, actionoriented and impactful. In addition, Ms. Schneider collaborates with financial services companies and others regarding strategy development and product design related to the underbanked market.
Prior to joining CFSI, Ms. Schneider consulted with financial institutions, foundations and nonprofits – including CFSI – on innovative strategies and financial products to reach underserved markets. She was also previously the Associate Director of the Aspen Institute Initiative on Financial Security where she was responsible for leading the design of proposed products that would facilitate savings and investment by lower income Americans.
Ms. Schneider began her career as an investment banker at Merrill Lynch & Co., though she hails her interest in the
underbanked from her days as a VISTA Volunteer. She holds a J.D./M.B.A. from the University of Chicago, and a B.A.
from UC Berkeley.
Jeremy Shapiro
Yale University
Jeremy Shapiro (Ph.D., MIT) is currently a Post Doctoral Associate at Yale University. He collaborates on a number of
RCT evaluations focused on microfinance, financial literacy and environmental economics in India, South Africa
and Latin America. In addition to studying finance and development, his research also addresses behavioral and
experimental economics.
Tony Sheldon
Yale Program on Social Enterprise
Tony Sheldon is currently Executive Director of the Program on Social Enterprise, and Lecturer in Economic
Development, at the Yale School of Management. He has worked with microfinance institutions in Africa, Asia,
Latin America, and Eastern Europe, primarily in the areas of financial management and business planning. He has
also worked with several development finance networks and funders, including the Ford Foundation, ShoreBank
International, the Small Enterprise Education and Promotion Network, Women’s World Banking, the Consultative
Group to Assist the Poor (CGAP), and the World Bank. His publications include CGAP’s “Handbook on Business
Planning and Financial Modeling,” SEEP’s “Financial Ratio Analysis of Microfinance Institutions,” and Women’s World
Banking’s “Principles and Practices of Financial Management.” He has an Masters in Public and Private Management
from the Yale School of Management and an AB from Princeton University.
Christopher Udry
Yale University, Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab
Christopher Udry is the Henry J. Heinz, II Professor of Economics at Yale University. He is a development economist
whose research focuses on rural economic activity in Sub-Saharan Africa. He has conducted extensive field research in
West Africa on technological change in agriculture, the use of financial markets, asset accumulation and gift exchange
to cope with risk, gender relations and the structure of household economies, property rights and a variety of other
aspects of rural economic organization. He spent two years as a secondary school teacher in northern Ghana, and has
been a visiting scholar at Ahmadu Bello University in Nigeria and at the University of Ghana at Legon. He teaches
graduate courses on development economics, and undergraduate courses on Economic Development in Africa. Course
syllabi and a description of some of his current research can be found at his website.
James Vickery
Federal Reserve Bank of New York
James Vickery is an Economist in the Research and Statistics Group of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, where he
has worked since 2004. His research and policy work focuses on topics relating to financial intermediation, mortgage
markets and securitization. A separate line of research studies the provision of rainfall insurance to households in
developing countries. In addition, Mr. Vickery teaches at NYU Stern, where he was also a Visiting Assistant Professor
in 2007-08. Mr. Vickery holds a PhD in Economics from MIT. Prior to graduate school he was an economist at the
Reserve Bank of Australia.
Dean Yang
University of Michigan, Innovations for Poverty Action, Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab
Dean Yang is an Associate Professor at the University of Michigan, where he holds appointments at the Ford School of
Public Policy and the Department of Economics. His areas of interest include international migration and remittances,
microfinance, human capital, disasters, international trade, and crime and corruption. He is currently running survey
work and field experiments among Central American migrant workers in the U.S., among Philippine migrant workers
in Qatar, among potential overseas migrants in the Philippines, and on microfinance in Malawi and Mozambique. He
teaches courses in development economics and microeconomics at the undergraduate, master’s, and Ph.D. levels. He
was a visiting professor at Princeton University in 2006-07. He has worked as a consultant on development issues
for the World Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank, the UNDP, and in El Salvador and Peru. A native of the
Philippines, he received his undergraduate and Ph.D. degrees in economics from Harvard University.
Jolly Zachariah
Ujjivan
Jolly Zachariah is the Chief Operating Officer of the Western Region. He joined Ujjivan in August 2008, after 21 plus
years as a successful banker specializing in Retail Banking and Credit Cards with Citibank. He joined Citibank in 1986
after a brief stint in the travel industry. Citibank launched ‘Consumer Banking’ in India in1985. He later moved back
to India, joining the fledgling Credit Card business, and set up the Merchant Service function successfully. He learnt
the ropes of the cards business with a variety of roles, including recoveries, while continuing to grow professionally.
From India, Jolly moved to Bahrain, taking responsibility for the bank’s consumer business in Bahrain. After managing
the business in Bahrain successfully for over three years, he moved to Cairo, managing Marketing and Distribution
at Citibank, Egypt, one of Citibank’s designated high-growth locations. He successfully grew Citibank Egypt’s
business, introducing products, services and distribution strategies, many of which were the ‘first ever’ in the Egyptian
marketplace. His last assignment with Citibank was at New York, as Senior Vice President and Director, Agent &
Affinity Banking, Citi Cards.
Jonathan Zinman
Dartmouth College, Innovations for Poverty Action, and Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab
Jonathan Zinman is a tenured Associate Professor of Economics at Dartmouth College. He joined the faculty in 2005 after working as a researcher at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Professor Zinman obtained his PhD in economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2002, and a B.A. in government from Harvard in 1993. In addition to his work at Dartmouth, Professor Zinman also serves as a Visiting Scholar at the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, a member of the Behavioral Finance Forum, a research associate of Innovations for Poverty Action and J-PAL, a Research Advisory Board member of stickk.com, and a member of the new Sage/Sloan Foundations working group on Behavioral Economics and the Regulation of Retail Financial Markets.