Plenary Speakers

The 2012 SEEP Annual Conference brings together industry leaders to discuss the topics that are at the forefront of the inclusive markets agenda.

Below you will find the list of confirmed speakers for this year's four conference plenaries.

                           Wednesday, November 7                                                    Thursday, November 8

Measuring Impacts in Market Systems: 
Rethinking the Current Paradigm

Dr. Shawn Cunningham (Moderator)
MesoPartner, South Africa

Dr. Shawn Cunningham, an active member of SEEP’s Market Facilitation Initiative (MAFI), is a development consultant focused on ways to improve the performance and competitiveness of the private sector in developing countries, by combining a bottom-up perspective with systemic policy advocacy. He develops practical diagnostic instruments by integrating insights from process facilitation, change management and understanding how societies evolve and develop. His qualifications are mainly in business management, entrepreneurship and change management, while his PhD thesis investigated the role of market failures affecting transactions in knowledge intensive business services. He has published books on several topics related to economic development.

Dr. Cunningham started his career as an entrepreneur, but soon became involved in the promotion of entrepreneurship and economic development. He works as a consultant, facilitator and moderator on topics related to economic development and private sector development in Africa, Asia and Europe.  He is currently working on several assignments ranging from the fostering of closer collaboration between industries and science and technology institutions in the Southern African region; and training officials and experts on practical development methods in more than 20 countries. His main academic research and consulting practice is around the topic of upgrading and modernizing economic sectors by means of stimulating sectoral and regional innovation systems.

He is a partner in the international consultancy Mesopartner (registered in Germany), whose practical development instruments are used in more than 70 countries around the world. He holds several board and advisory positions and directorships in businesses and developmental institutions in Southern Africa and internationally. He is also known to provide his time and expertise to a variety of public or social causes. He is a Post Doctoral Fellow at the Vaal University of Technology and a Research Associate at the Institute for Economic Research on Innovation at Tshwane University of Technology.

Dr. Shamim Bodhanya
University of KwaZulu Natal, South Africa

Shamim is a graduate of the University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa and Nyenrode University in the Netherlands. Shamim, a trained and practicing engineer, worked in the corporate sector for nearly 14 years, serving in a variety of functional, professional and managerial capacities before joining academia.  Shamim was a founding member of Equilibria Consulting, and currently serves as Chairperson of the Institute for Natural Resources.  He is the Academic Leader for Higher Degrees and Research at the Graduate School of Business and Leadership and draws on inter-disciplinary research to work with complex real world problems. He is actively involved in research, programme development, module development, lecturing, facilitation, and consulting. He has engaged in facilitation in a variety of contexts both for small groups and large groups. Some of these include: strategy, business planning, conflict, union, training, skills development, youth workshops and simulations amongst others. His work in complexity theory has been applied in the public and private sector, NGOs and civil society contexts, e.g. sugar cane production and supply, local economic development, automotive, rural health, and rural development.

Dr. Elizabeth Dunn
Impact LLC

Dr. Elizabeth Dunn has over 20 years of experience designing evaluations and leading research on low-income households and factors affecting their participation in market systems. She has worked on projects related to micro- and small enterprise development, smallholder agriculture, inclusive value chain development and microfinance. As a thought leader in the evaluation of inclusive market systems, Elizabeth uses concepts from complex adaptive systems (CAS) and social network analysis to create an analytical framework for evaluating the evidence from inclusive value chain development projects and improving understanding of the factors affecting smallholder participation, value creation and value capture in regional and global market systems.

Elizabeth was a major contributor to USAID’s work on value chain development under the AMAP project. She provided technical leadership for a wide variety of evaluations, including a longitudinal, mixed-method evaluation of the effectiveness of USAID’s GMED project in India. For the World Bank, she led a five-year impact evaluation of 3,300 micro- and small enterprises across nine financial institutions under the Local Initiatives Project II in Bosnia and Herzegovina. She was Technical Director for core impact assessments under USAID’s AIMS project, providing leadership to longitudinal evaluations in Peru, India, and Zambia. Dr. Dunn’s leadership in evaluation is widely recognized, as evidenced by invitations to serve on expert panels from the U.S. General Accountability Office (GAO), National Science Foundation (NSF), Consultative Group to Assist the Poor (CGAP) and BASIS Collaborative Research Support Program (USAID). She received USDA’s National Exemplary Evaluation Award in 2004. Elizabeth has worked with, amongst others, USAID, World Bank, International Finance Corporation, Inter-American Development Bank, Government of Bosnia and Herzegovina, DFID, KfW, ACDI/VOCA, DAI, IRIS, AED, ACCION International, Women’s World Banking, Microfinance Opportunities, Monsanto, CARE and SEEP. Elizabeth holds a Ph.D. in Agricultural Economics from the University of Wisconsin and has field experience in more than 20 countries.

Richard Hummelbrunner
ÖAR Regionalberatung, Austria

Richard Hummelbrunner is Senior Associate of ÖAR Regionalberatung Graz, Austria with more than 30 years of professional experience as a consultant / evaluator in the fields of regional and international development. During recent years he has been active in promoting the use of systems thinking in evaluation as a practitioner, trainer and author. He has developed and piloted a methodology for impact-oriented monitoring of complex programmes (‘Process Monitoring of Impacts). He has recently co-authored (with Bob Williams) the book “Systems Concepts in Action: A Practitioners Toolkit”. He has lectured at various European Universities and provided training on systems concepts, as well as evaluation, to private organizations and public authorities in several European countries. He has been a regular presenter and trainer at the Conferences of the European Evaluation Society (EES) and the American Evaluation Association (AEA). He is an active member of AEA's Topical Interest Group ‘Systems in Evaluation’ and the Working Group ‘Systemic Evaluation’ of the German Evaluation Society.

He started his career as a practitioner in local and regional development projects and later became a consultant, working for a broad range of clients in Austria and internationally. His expertise includes planning and evaluation of projects/programmes, local/regional development and SME development with a particular emphasis on policy and strategy elaboration as well as the establishment of support structures. In Development Co-operation he was a consultant for private sector promotion and regional development in Sub-Saharan Africa (e.g. Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, Namibia, Sénégal) and the Balkans (e.g. Serbia, Albania, Montenegro), in assignments for the Austrian Ministry for Foreign Affairs and the Austrian Development Agency (ADA). He has recently advised several international agencies on M&E methodology (e.g. GTZ/GIZ, FASID, UNIDO). He holds a degree in Business Administration from the University of Economics and a degree in spatial planning from the Technical University, both located in Vienna, Austria.

 Savings on a Global Scale: How Can We Do Better?

David Myhre (moderator)
Senior Advisor, Financial Services Community of Practice, SEEP

 For more than 25 years, David has worked to promote sustainable, equitable development, primarily in Latin America. From fall 2008, as Director of Microfinance at the MasterCard Foundation, he helped launch a grantmaking program to extend financial services to the poor in Africa. In mid-2010, he returned to his primary interests in Latin America as a consultant on migration and development, financial inclusion and strengthening rural communities. David previously served as Program Officer (2001-2006) and Senior Program Officer (2006-2008) for Development Finance and Economic Security in the Ford Foundation’s Office for Mexico and Central America, based in Mexico City. His grantmaking focused on promoting rural microcredit and savings programs, as well as the strengthening of microfinance networks.  

Robert A. Annibale
Citi Microfinance and Community Development

Bob manages Citi’s partnerships with global, national and local organizations to support community development through economic empowerment and financial inclusion, focusing on responsible and accessible finance, education and asset building; neighborhood preservation and revitalization; access to college education; and small business and microenterprise development. Bob also leads Citi’s commercial relationships with microfinance and other financial institutions, networks and investors ,working across Citi’s businesses and geographies, to expand access to financial services in underserved communities. 

Since joining Citi, Bob has held a number of senior treasury, risk and corporate positions in Athens, Bahrain, Kenya, London and New York. He has served on many external boards and councils, including the Board of Advisors for the United Nations Commission on Legal Empowerment of the Poor. He currently is a member of the Policy Committee of the Centre for the Study of African Economies at the Universityof Oxford. He represents Citi on the Boards of the Microfinance Information Exchange, the Center for Financial Services Innovation (CSFI), the US FDIC Chairman’s Committee on Economic Empowerment, the Citi Foundation and the Executive Committee of CGAP (World Bank).

Bob completed his BA degrees in History and Political Science atVassar College, in New York, and his Masters Degree in African Studies (History) at the University of London, School o fOriental and African Studies. 

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. She provides oversight on financial service activities to AKF rural development programmes globally, including Savings Group programmes in seven countries in Asia and Africa. Ms. Ledgerwood is a contributing author to the forthcoming SEEP publication Savings Groups at the Frontier. Primarily a microfinance specialist, Ms. Ledgerwood is a former commercial banker with experience in microfinance, SME finance, credit reference bureaus, business development services, and regulatory reform. Prior to moving to Geneva, Ms. Ledgerwood spent six years in Kampala Uganda providing support to MFIs to become regulated deposit-taking institutions, and two years in the Philippines working with rural banks to deepen their outreach to poor men and women. 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 writing the New Microfinance Handbook, A Financial Market System Perspective to be published in 2012. 

Leora Klapper
World Bank 

Leora Klapper is a Lead Economist in the Finance and Private Sector Research Team of the Development Research Group at the World Bank. Since joining the Bank as a Young Economist in 1998, she has published on entrepreneurship, access to finance, corporate governance, bankruptcy, and risk management. Her current research focuses on entrepreneurship and household finance, and measurements of financial inclusion.  Prior to coming to the Bank she worked at the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, the Bank of Israel, and Salomon Smith Barney. She holds a Ph.D. in Financial Economics from New York University Stern School of Business.

Dennis Ripley
Opportunity International

Dennis Ripley is the Senior Vice President, International Business Development at Opportunity International. He sets the institutional and corporate donor fundraising strategy and provides oversight for the grant and equity funding raised and placed in Opportunity’s banks and insurance companies in 24 countries. He also serves on the board of MicroEnsure, its insurance subsidiary, and is a board member of its financial institutions in Colombia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.  Dennis joined Opportunity in 1992 as its vice president for programs, and served as vice president for planning and development before moving into his current role. Prior to joining Opportunity, Dennis was founding president of Exodus World Service in Roselle, IL, a humanitarian agency devoted to mobilizing community groups, families and individuals on behalf of refugees settling in the U.S.  From 1980-1986 he was World Relief Corporation's director of program services in the Refugee Services Division, and vice president and director of the Refugee Services Division from 1986-1988. Dennis received a Masters of Divinity and completed coursework toward a Masters of Theology at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Deerfield, IL. He completed his Bachelor of Arts degree at Evangel College in Springfield, MO.

Private Sector Partnership and Inclusive Markets:
Promising Trends, Inherent Tensions

Alison Griffith (moderator)
Practical Action, UK

Alison Griffith is the Senior Policy and Practice Advisor for Markets and Private Sector at Practical Action (formerly ITDG). She is the lead for the organisation’s work on pro-poor market development and private sector engagement. Her previous roles included 8 years heading an international team developing innovative approaches, such as Participatory Market System Development.

In addition to her position on the Board of SEEP, she is also an advisor to Traidcraft, the UK’s leading fair-trade organisation.

Alison has been with Practical Action since 2001 and previously worked in development consultancy, fair trade, livestock services in Africa and UK agriculture. She has a BSc in Agriculture and Food Marketing and a Masters by Research.

Mahbub Anam
Lal Teer Seed Limited, Bangladesh

Mr. Mahbub Anam has been the Managing Director of Lal Teer Seed Limited in Bangladesh for the past 15 years. The company, under his guidance, has been working closely with Katalyst, one of Dfid’s flagship Markets for the Poor (M4P) projects, since 2007.

Lal Teer was the first research-based Seed Company in the private sector in Bangladesh and the first to develop hybrid seeds to increase crop yields to support food security. Katalyst has worked with Lal Teer to create access to quality seeds for small and marginal farmers through Mobile Seed Vendors by incorporating them in the mainstream seed marketing channel. This has included training of resource farmers, incorporating opinion leaders and creating information booths on market days to create a formal information dissemination system.

Katalyst supported Lal Teer in capacity building of the marketing staff to improve access to quality seeds for farmers.  Katalyst and Action for Enterprise (AFE) undertook further interventions with Lal Teer to increase the supply of quality vegetable seeds through exposure visits and international linkages and introduction of mini-packs of quality seeds (with Lal Teer acting as the market trend setter showing huge potential to reach a large number of small and/or homestead farmers with better quality seeds). In 17 years Lal Teer has become one of the top seed enterprises in Southeast Asia with 500 employees and more than 11000 contract growers.

Previously Mahbub supported the Bangladeshi Readymade Garments industry by campaigning for the container shipment concept that ultimately helped to develop the industry from 25 factories to 4000 factories today. Mahbub has recently taken on Lal Teer Livestock Limited as a new venture to develop better local breed for cattle & buffalo to increase milk & meat production in Bangladesh.

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Zahid Torres-Rahman
Business Fights Poverty, UK

Zahid Torres-Rahman is an expert in private sector development and a specialist in developing platforms and partnerships that bring together the worlds of business and international development. He is Founding Director of Business Action for Africa, an international network of over 150 businesses and development partners, led by a board of multinational corporations, DFID, CDC and the International Business Leaders Forum.

He is founder of Business Fights Poverty, the leading online community for business and development, connecting over 10,000 professionals.

He co-founded Inspiris, a strategy and communications agency where he regularly acts as an adviser to a range of organizations, such as recently supporting SABMiller set up a major partnership with DFID and an NGO, to build smallholder farmer capacity in support of the company’s local sourcing objectives in South Sudan.  He acted as lead adviser to the UK's Department for International Development on business engagement, and helped to develop the Business Call to Action and the Business Innovation Facility.

He was a member of the Steering Group for DFID’s Private Sector Development Strategy and a Special Adviser to the UK Parliament’s International Development Committee Inquiry on Private Sector Development. He was the lead author of the Commission for Africa’s chapter on Growth and Poverty Reduction and a member of the Advisory Panel of the Vodafone Social-Economic Impact of Mobiles Programme. 

 New Strategies in Building Assets for the Ultra Poor

Frank DeGiovanni (moderator)
Ford Foundation

Frank DeGiovanni is Ford's director of Financial Assets. He leads the foundation's worldwide efforts to build financial assets for disadvantaged people with support through grants and Program-Related Investments (PRIs). His team makes grants through a focused set of initiatives on savings, individual asset development, Social Security reform, rural livelihood development and consumer financial services.

Prior to assuming his current position, Frank was the foundation's deputy director of Program-Related Investments, where he was responsible for creating and monitoring a diverse loan portfolio of organizations promoting community and economic development in the United States and internationally.

Before joining the Ford Foundation in 1991, Frank was associate professor and senior research associate at the New School for Social Research in New York City, where he researched and taught graduate-level courses in housing and community development, urban political economy and policy analysis. From 1985 to 1987, he was chairman of the Pratt Institute's Department of City and Regional Planning in Brooklyn, where he also taught and consulted on projects in housing and community development.

Frank has a Ph.D. and a master's in regional planning, both from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Leonardo Alvarez
Plan International 

Leonardo Alvarez is Regional Economic Security Specialist for the Americas at Plan International. From Plan’s offices in his native Honduras, Leonardo contributes to the organization’s global strategy in the field of economic security. His activities include improving outreach to the poor in rural financial markets, delivering financial education for children and youth, promoting financial inclusion processes for families living in poverty and extreme poverty, and implementing programming for the ultra poor. In addition, he supports Plan’s work in youth employment, entrepreneurship development, and financial products and services for youth. Since earning Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Plant and Soil Science at Alabama A&M University, Leonardo has worked for 20 years in rural microenterprise development across Central America. Prior to joining Plan in 2006 as Microfinance National Advisor for Honduras, he served five years as Credit Manager at ODEF, a leading provider of quality savings and credit products for poor Honduran women. Previous to that Leonardo spent seven years working in natural resource management and rural business development for Katalysis. 

Carlos Alberto Moya Franco 
International Consultant on Financial Inclusion

Carlos Alberto Moya Franco is an International Consultant on Financial Inclusion.  From 2006 until October 2012, he was the first Director of Banca de las Oportunidades of the Government of Colombia, the National Policy for Financial Inclusion that provides livelihoods support for the extremely poor, including conditional cash transfer beneficiaries. He has worked in Colombia in the National Planning Ministry, was vice-director of the National Housing Institute, and has served as Advisor in the Banco Central Hipotecario (Central Mortgage Bank) and in the Ministry of Commerce, Industry and Tourism.  Mr. Moya also has been a professor and researcher at the Universidad de los Andes, and has consulted with the Inter-American Development Bank and the UNDP. He holds a Bachelor’s in Economics from the Universidad de los Andes and a Master’s in Regional and Urban Development from the London School of Economics.

Camilla Nestor
Grameen Foundation 

Camilla Nestor is Vice President, Financial Services at Grameen Foundation. She joined Grameen Foundation in August 2005 and previously served as Growth Guarantees Manager and Director of the Capital Markets. Camilla has 15 years of experience in microfinance and commercial banking. Before joining Grameen Foundation, she worked in Citigroup’s Structured Corporate Finance Department where she executed credit-enhanced debt financings for emerging markets firms in Africa, the Middle East and Eastern Europe. Prior to joining Citi, she spent five years on the ground in Southeast Asia, the Balkans, and Africa working with microfinance institutions and rural banks on start-up, new product development, and capital raising. Camilla holds an MBA and a Master’s degree in International Affairs from Columbia University and a Bachelor’s degree in Political Science and International Relations from Colorado College. She is an adjunct professor at Columbia University’s School of International & Public Affairs and serves on the boards of Grameen Capital India and Microlumbia.