Jeanette Thomas

Communications Director. Jeanette is the manager of Knowledge Products and Communications for the Consultative Group to Assist the Poor (CGAP). She and her team handle all corporate communications, media, and positioning for CGAP, as well as stakeholder engagement and project communications. The team is responsible for the strategy and management of a full suite of knowledge and communications products, encompassing a renowned series of publications, the CGAP Microfinance Blog and the CGAP Technology Blog, as well as the corporate Web site, cgap.org, and the Microfinance Gateway, the most comprehensive resource for microfinance information in the world with over 8000 microfinance documents in the library.

Jeanette joined CGAP as the manager of the Communications Team in 2004. Before that she was news editor and senior producer in the BBC’s Washington Bureau.

She started her 11-year tenure at the BBC in London, producing radio documentaries and Start the Week with Melvyn Bragg , BBC Radio 4’s longest-running discussion program. She moved into TV news with Newsnight in 1999, and spent five years covering North America for BBC News, including the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections, the 9/11 airline attacks, earthquakes in El Salvador, the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, and the economic crash and elections in Argentina. In 2003–2004, she produced a series of films for the World Bank on development projects in the Middle East. She continues this media work as she develops CGAP’s multimedia presence, including launching a multimedia console on cgap.org in 2009, and producing project-based films, as well as an interview series available as a podcast on iTunes.

She has a master’s degree and Ph.D. in English Literature from Oxford University. She speaks English, French, and rudimentary Spanish. She recently returned to Washington,  D.C., after two years based in Jerusalem.