Advisory Council
The Center’s Advisory Council counsels the Center on development of new program areas, projects and research. Composed of leaders from the microfinance industry and the financial sector, the Advisory Council members have thought deeply about providing financial services to the poor and are focused on future challenges and opportunities. The Council aids Center staff in creating relationships in the industry, further developing the Center’s current initiatives and holding us accountable for serving the industry and achieving results.
Advisory Council members are diverse stakeholders who share in common: a commitment to advancing the field of inclusive financial services, intellectual independence and rigor, a focus on the future of the industry, a belief in the value of collaboration and an understanding of the importance of bridging the gap between the private sector and mainstream microfinance players.
Advisory Council Members
Alexander Bloch
Alexander Bloch has over twenty-six years of experience in information technology management, gained primarily within the financial services industry. Mr. Bloch’s substantial banking and consulting experience is complemented by the Corporate CIO and Board Management roles at a major Russian oil and gas company, where he successfully implemented a number of IT transformation programs, major ERP solutions and Business Intelligence (BI) applications that led to world class IT price/performance.
Since 2007 Mr. Bloch has been leading IBM’s global microfinance initiative titled “Banking the Unbanked”. This important program is focused on developing global business opportunities and implementing innovative technologies designed to dramatically reduce the processing and distribution costs of microfinance institutions thus broadening their reach throughout the unbanked populations in the developing countries and thereby becoming a positive force in the fight against poverty.
Before joining IBM, Alexander Bloch was a Director of PricewaterhouseCoopers’ IT Strategy practice. He managed a large number of consulting engagements focused on enhancing the effectiveness of corporate IT performance in major banks, card companies, insurance organizations and other financial services firms
Philip Brown
Philip Brown is director of risk for Citi Microfinance’s global business. He is the senior credit officer responsible for the development of policies, programs and risk tools to enable Citi’s businesses to commercially engage with the sector. Before moving to Citi Microfinance he was the risk manager for Project Finance and Structured Trade Finance within EMEA. Mr. Brown joined Citibank in 1971 and has had a variety of client, product and business management assignments. These span financial institutions, corporate, commercial, investment, and private banking with product roles in cash management and trade. They have included country head; business and staff positions in the United States, Europe, Sri Lanka, Channel Islands; audit and risk review for EMEA; and head of regulatory for Citicorp UK. Mr. Brown is a fellow of the Institute of Financial Services, a member of the Governing Council of the Centre for the Study of Financial Innovation, and former Chairman of the Strategic Planning Society.
Mr. Brown economics degree from the University of London and completed further post-graduate studies at the University of Salford and London and Darden Business Schools.
Paul D. Christensen
Paul Christensen is a senior lecturer at the Kellogg School of Management where he teaches courses on microfinance and international business. In addition, he helps direct the school’s International Business and Markets Program where he is involved in international curriculum development, visiting scholars and executives, student club activities and alumni outreach.
Prior to Kellogg, Mr. Christensen served as the founder and President of ShoreCap International Ltd., a $28 million private equity company sponsored by ShoreBank Corporation which invests in financial institutions in developing countries throughout Africa, Asia, and Eastern Europe. Having established the company in London, Mr. Christensen built a portfolio of 15 leading development finance institutions serving over 1,000,000 microfinance and small business clients and produced annual fund returns in excess of 20%. From 2000-2003, Mr. Christensen served as president and CEO of ShoreBank Enterprise Group, a $12 million-asset small business development organization in Cleveland, Ohio. Prior to joining ShoreBank, he was an engagement manager for the consulting firm, McKinsey and Company, where he focused on operations performance, organizational effectiveness and strategic planning for clients in the financial services, manufacturing, consumer goods, petroleum, and electric utility industries.
Mr. Christensen earned an MBA with distinction from Cornell University and a BA in economics, summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa, from Dartmouth College.
Brian Clancy
Brian Clancy is the Advisory Council chairman for the Center for Financial Inclusion and a member of the Board of Directors of ACCION International. He is the CEO of Kendae Technology, a company dedicated to delivering online decision-support solutions to individuals and organizations. Kendae Technology is currently in the process of developing an extensible software platform and the first in a series of commercial applications.
Prior to founding Kendae, Mr. Clancy was a senior manager at Fidelity Investments for 15 years. There he served as the chief financial officer and senior vice president of Investment Operations for the firm’s investment management arm. Other roles he played over the years included senior vice president of New Business and Market Development, senior vice president of Investment Management Technology, and senior vice president of Defined Contribution Institutional and Participant Services.
Mr. Clancy holds an MBA from Harvard University and a BA from Cornell University.
Alex Counts
Alex Counts has more than two decades experience in microfinance, starting as a Fulbright scholar at Grameen Bank in Bangladesh. In 1997, he founded Grameen Foundation, a dynamic, nonprofit that fights global poverty through its network of microfinance partners in 28 countries in the Americas, Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. Through this network, Grameen Foundation has impacted the lives of an estimated 31 million of the world’s poor. Through its Strategic Services unit, the foundation is engaging the global microfinance industry by championing innovations focused on capital investment in microfinance, poverty measurement, human resources, and technology
Prior to establishing Grameen Foundation, Mr. Counts served as the legislative director of RESULTS and also worked as regional project manager for CARE-Bangladesh. While at Grameen Bank, he worked and studied under Nobel Laureate Professor Muhammad Yunus, founder and managing director of Grameen Bank, and helped to establish the bank’s flagship newsletter, Grameen Dialogue. Mr. Counts chairs the board of Project Enterprise and serves on the boards of Fonkoze USA and the PLAN Fund. He is also a member of the Board of Advisors of the Katalysis Bootstrap Fund and a member of the Editorial Advisory Board of Grameen Dialogue. In addition, he serves on the board of Grameen-Jameel Pan Arab Microfinance Limited, an enterprise based on Professor Yunus’ concept of social businesses.
Mr. Counts is the author of Small Loans: Big Dreams, published by Wiley and Sons in March 2008, and Give Us Credit: How Muhammad Yunus' Micro-Lending Revolution is Empowering Women from Bangladesh to Chicago, which was published by Random House (New York) and Research Press (New Delhi) in 1996. He earned a BA in economics from Cornell University.
Anthony R. Goland
Anthony Goland is a director in the MidAtlantic Office of McKinsey & Company. He is a senior leader of both the North American and Asian Financial Institutions Groups, and he leads the firm’s global efforts to promote financial inclusion among the world’s poor. Since joining the firm in 1985, Mr. Goland has helped clients address their most challenging strategy, operations, and organization problems and build their capabilities to successfully implement. he has served clients in the US, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, Korea, Taiwan, and UK.
Prior to joining McKinsey, Mr. Goland worked for Morgan Bank Delaware, a subsidiary of J.P. Morgan Chase, and served on the Board of Trustees of the University of Delaware. He also previously served as a Supply Sergeant in the U.S. Army Europe, where he was stationed in the Federal Republic of Germany.
Mr. Goland graduated with high distinction as a Baker Scholar from the Harvard Business School and summa cum laude in finance and economics from the University of Delaware.
Kurt Koenigsfest
Kurt Koenigsfest is the CEO of BancoSol, a private commercial bank which provides loans to low-income micro entrepreneurs in Bolivia. The Bank started as an NGO, and incorporated as a fully-fledged bank in 1992 in order to meet the growing demand for micro loans on a self-financing basis. Mr. Koenigsfest has held a variety of positions in the credit, operations, and business-development areas of the Bolivian banking industry since 1989. Among others, he spent nine years with Banco Nacional de Bolivia, the largest Bolivian private Bank. He is also board member of a number of banking and microfinance boards including the boards of ASOBAN (the Bolivian Private Banking Association), AFIN (the Microfinance Training Institute of Bolivia), and ATC (credit- and debit-card processor). He is chairman of the board of ASOFIN, the Association of Regulated Microfinance Institutions of Bolivia, and was recently elected Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum in Geneva, Switzerland.
A native of La Paz, he graduated with a degree in business administration from the University of North Texas.
Chris Larsen
Chris Larsen is CEO and co-founder of Prosper, America’s largest people-to-people lending marketplace. Prosper is a continuation of Larsen’s commitment to leveraging the Internet to make consumer lending more efficient, transparent, and trustworthy. Prior to Prosper, Mr. Larsen co-founded and served as chairman and CEO of E-LOAN. Under his leadership, E-LOAN became the first company to provide consumers with access to their credit scores and played a critical role in the passage of the strongest consumer financial-privacy-protection law in the nation.
Mr. Larsen holds an MBA from Stanford University and a BS from San Francisco State University, where he was named the 2004 Alumnus of the Year.
Christina Leijonhufvud
Christina Leijonhufvud is head of Social Sector Finance at J.P. Morgan’s Investment Bank. This commercial initiative is focused on capital markets and principal investment opportunities within the microfinance, and broader social enterprise, sector. Among other roles at J.P. Morgan, Ms. Leijonhufvud headed Country Risk Management & Advisory for several years, providing both oversight of the firm’s portfolio of country risks and rating advisory services to sovereign clients worldwide. She has also had responsibility for Emerging Markets Market Risk Mananagement, Industry Concentrations, as well as Credit Portfolio Market Risk Management. Outside J.P.Morgan, Ms. Leijonhufvud has been a consultant to Ashoka-Innovators for the Public in their social financial services venture, has organized volunteer trips to El Salvador, and regularly lectures at universities on financial globalization and emerging markets. Prior to joining J.P. Morgan in 1996, she worked at the World Bank as a country officer, helping develop reform programs and borrowing strategies for the former Soviet Republics of Central Asia. In 1991, she served on the Economic Reform Committee for the Government of Kazakhstan.
Ms. Leijonhufvud earned a MSc degree in Economics from the London School of Economics, a MA degree in international affairs from George Washington University, and a BA in sociology from the University of California – Los Angeles.
Kate McKee
Since late 2006 Kate McKee has served as senior advisor at CGAP, a global microfinance resource center, responsible for work on consumer protection and client transparency, savings, state-owned banks, and strategies for delivering financial services to poorer clients. Previously she was the 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 microfinance and microenterprise initiatives in 70+ countries. From 1986-98 Ms. McKee was a senior manager with Self Help in North Carolina, the largest nonprofit Community Development Financial Institution (CDFI) in the US. From 1994-95 she led the start-up of the federal government CDFI Fund, to invest in CDFIs and provide incentives for mainstream financial institutions to boost community development lending. She also developed and led international and domestic enterprise, finance, rural development and women’s programs for the Ford Foundation in its headquarters and West Africa office in Lagos. Her board service has included the Consumer Advisory Council (including Chair) of the U.S. Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve.
Ms. Mckee earned a MA in Public and International Affairs from the Woodrow Wilson School of Princeton University.
Adrian Merryman
Adrian Merryman is the CEO of the Opportunity International Network. Opportunity International offers financial services and related training to enable transformation in the lives of its clients, their families and their communities. Previously, Mr. Merryman served as an investment banker for Merrill Lynch & Co. and CIBC Oppenheimer Corp.; CEO of Temenos System S.A., a Geneva-based leader in the global banking software industry; chief investment officer of Interregnum plc, a London-based, venture-capital firm; and CEO of Screen plc, a UK-based technology company focused on security, surveillance, defense, and transportation. He has also served on the boards of numerous companies and Christian ministries in Europe and the United States.
Mr. Merryman earned an MBA from the Harvard Business School and is a graduate of Swarthmore College with degrees in political science and economics.
Jonathan J. Morduch
Professor Morduch, professor of public policy and economics, teaches on international development with a focus on the spread of financial access to under-served populations. He is the co-author of The Economics of Microfinance (MIT Press, 2005) and has written recently on the analytics of social investment, the development of new insurance markets, and ways that low-income households use financial services. Professor Morduch directs the Financial Access Initiative, a research consortium based at NYU Wagner. He is currently an advisor to the board of Pro Mujer and is a member of the United Nations Advisors Group on Inclusive Financial Sectors. Since 2003, has been the Chair of the United Nations Steering Committee on Poverty Measurement. Professor Morduch has taught on the economics faculty at Harvard University and is a visiting faculty member/visiting scholar at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University; Woodrow Wilson School, Princeton University; and the Department of Economics, University of Tokyo.
Professor Morduch earned his PhD in economics from Harvard University and his BA from Brown.
Ashwini Narayanan
Ashwini Narayanan is the chief operating officer at MicroPlace and is responsible for the execution of MicroPlace's business and product vision. She manages product development, technology and operations for MicroPlace and is responsible for building out MicroPlace’s platform and services. She has over 10 years of experience in designing, building and managing products in the e-commerce and payment industries. Before joining MicroPlace, Ms. Narayanan worked at PayPal as director of financial services for North America. Prior to that, Ashwini was responsible for product strategy as senior director of product for CyberSource and product unit manager (Authorize.net) at InfoSpace.
Ashwini has an undergraduate degree in Physics, a diploma in computer science and an MBA from the Monterey Institute of International Studies.
David Porteous
David Porteous is the founder and director of Bankable Frontier Associates, a niche consulting firm based in Boston, Massachusetts. 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. He also sits on the Strategy Committee of the CGAP Technology Program and the Vodafone-Nokia Social Impact of Mobiles (SIM) Panel.
In previous capacities, Dr. Porteous 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.
Dr. Porteous earned a BComm from the University of Cape Town, a MPhil from Cambridge University, and a PhD from Yale.
Marguerite S. Robinson
Marguerite S. Robinson is an independent consultant on microfinance and social and economic development and an author. She 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. She works in throughout Asia, Africa, and Latin America, advising governments, banks, donors, and others, and is the author of many papers and books on development and microfinance.
Dr. Robinson served as a professor of anthropology at Brandeis from 1965-1985 and dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at Brandeis University from 1973-1975. She joined the Harvard Institute for International Development in 1980, serving as a fellow until 2000.
Dr. Robinson earned a BA in history and literature from Radcliffe College at Harvard University and a PhD in anthropology from Harvard University.
Diana Taylor
Ms. Taylor is currently a managing director at Wolfensohn & Co., a New York-based investment banking firm. Prior to joining Wolfensohn, she served as superintendent of banks for the State of New York, from 2003 to 2007. Between 1996 and 2003 Ms. Taylor held various positions in the New York state government, including CFO of the Long Island Power Authority and deputy secretary to the governor for housing and finance. Prior to her government work, she was an investment banker at Smith Barney, Lehman Brothers and Donaldson Lufkin & Jenrette.
Ms. Taylor sits on the boards of Allianz Global Investors, Brookfield Properties, FNMA, and Sotheby’s. She also sits on several not-for-profit boards, including the Hudson River Park Trust, which she chairs, and Dartmouth College, the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University, the New York Women’s Foundation, and the International Women’s Health Coalition. She chairs a Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation commission focused on financially underserved communities, and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
Ms. Taylor completed her A.B. at Dartmouth College where she majored in economics. She earned her M.B.A. from Columbia Business School where she majored in finance, and her M.P.H. from the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University. She resides in Manhattan.
Donald F. Terry
Donald F. Terry is an expert in matters involving financial inclusion, particularly remittances and microfinance. Mr. Terry was the General Manager of the Multilateral Investment Fund (MIF) of the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) from its inception in 1993 until July 2008. Under Mr. Terry’s leadership, the MIF helped to transform Latin American microfinance into a commercially sustainable industry, which now reaches more than ten million clients, and serves as a model for the rest of the developing world. Currently Mr. Terry consults with the World Bank and the International Youth Foundation, and he provides strategic advisory services to bi-lateral donors, and several international organizations. He is also an adjunct professor at the Morin Center of Boston University Law School.
Before joining the MIF, Mr. Terry served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for International Affairs, where he received that Department’s Meritorious Service Award in 1980. From 1982-1993, Mr. Terry served as Staff Director of three Congressional Committees: The Joint Economic Committee, the House Committee on Small Business, and the House Committee on Banking and Financial Institutions.
Mr. Terry holds a bachelor's degree in Political Science from Yale University (1968) and a law degree from the University of California Law School at Berkeley (1972). He also graduated from the Senior Managers in Government Program at the Harvard Business School in 1978.
Paul Tregidgo
Paul Tregidgo is a Managing Director of Credit Suisse, Vice Chairman of Debt Capital Markets and Vice Chairman of the Global Markets Solutions Group (GMSG) within the Investment Banking division. He is responsible for the international DCM business, across investment grade and emerging markets globally. Mr. Tregidgo is a member of the Investment Banking division's Management Council, and the Bank's Fixed Income and GMSG Global Operating Committees.
Previously, Mr. Tregidgo was Global Head of Debt Capital Markets, with responsibility for overseeing Investment Grade and Emerging Debt Capital Markets, and the origination and execution of international debt financings for sovereign, supranational, public and private sector issuers in the global bond markets. Prior to this, he was Head of Emerging Debt Capital Markets.
Prior to joining the Bank in 1985, he practiced international financial law in London and Hong Kong. Mr. Tregidgo obtained his law degree from the University of Cambridge and was admitted as a Solicitor in both the U.K. and Hong Kong.
William Tucker
William Tucker serves as the executive director of SEEP and has over 30 years of microenterprise development experience. Previously he worked for ACCION International, the World Council of Credit Unions, and NCBA, as well as within his own consulting firm. He has worked in 45 countries and lived for 20 years in Latin America and 6 years in Egypt. He is a permanent instructor at the Boulder Institute.