Meet the Team

Lene Hansen (Review Board)
Lene is an independent consultant with 14 years of field experience in microfinance working with funding agencies, microfinance institutions, and industry associations in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. Since 2005, she has specialized in microfinance and small business finance in conflict-affected environments, designing and supporting microfinance and donor coordination initiatives in Iraq, Afghanistan, Northern and Southern Sudan, Timor-Leste, and Palestine. Lene has served as Team Leader for USAID’s economic empowerment program in Nepal in 1997-99, as programme manager for an EC-funded microfinance technical support project providing credit lines, bank guarantees and capacity building grants in Uganda during 1999-2003, and as Chief of Party for a similar USAID-funded project in Palestine in 2007. She is a Visiting Fellow at the Feinstein International Center at Tuft’s University and has taught at the CGAP and UNCDF course targeted to donors.

She has been a member of the global technical forum that worked to define and standardize performance monitoring for microfinance institutions and trains financial service providers in performance monitoring tools. Lene has an M.A. from Copenhagen University in political science and international economics. Lene was part of the early portfolio review efforts of CGAP’s aid effectiveness initiative and is now a SmartAid Review Board member. Lene reads all submissions, scores agencies, and contributes to the final reports.

Kathryn Imboden (Review Board)
Kathryn is active in microfinance as a Policy Advisory Consultant for CGAP and as the manager of a Swiss Microfinance Holding. She began work in the field of economic development with the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) in Chad, followed by the OECD Development Centre, the Club du Sahel and the US Treasury Department. Over a long period of time, she was responsible for SDC’s economic work (macroeconomics and financial sector), during which she chaired the Executive Committee of CGAP. She served as Policy Change Manager with Women’s World Banking (WWB) and led a policy work program at UNCDF during the 2005 International Year of Microcredit. She conducted policy work for the Aga Khan Foundation, with a focus on the enabling environment for private initiative in Afghanistan. Kathryn is a graduate of Mount Holyoke College (USA) and the Institut d’études politiques de Paris. Kathryn is a review board member for SmartAid 2011.

Klaus Maurer (Review Board)
Klaus has 25 years of work experience in financial systems development in 35 developing and transition countries, with a particular focus on rural and microfinance. Most of his professional career he worked as an independent consultant and trainer for multilateral and bilateral development organizations such as ADB, IFAD, World Bank, CGAP, KfW, GTZ, SDC, Sida and others, primarily in Asia and Eastern Europe.

Currently, he is Chairman of the Supervisory Board of Finance in Motion, an alternative asset management company based in Frankfurt/Germany. Finance in Motion is the investment advisor of the European Fund for Southeast Europe (EFSE), the world’s leading investment fund for micro and small enterprise finance. In previous assignments, Klaus Maurer has been instrumental in developing and building the EFSE as a flagship fund, initially as a Senior Advisor (1998-2004) and later as Chief Investment Officer (2005-2008).

From 1986 to 1988 he was a project manager at KfW Development Bank and from 1989 to 1991 served GTZ as microfinance advisor to the Central Bank of Indonesia. He holds a doctorate in Financial Economics from the Free University Berlin. He currently also teaches microfinance at the University for Applied Sciences (HTW) in Berlin, Germany. Klaus Maurer serves as a Review Board member in SmartAid 2011.

Heather Clark (Review Board)
Heather is an independent consultant with 20 years of experience working in microfinance with funding agencies, microfinance institutions, and training institutes. Heather works with MFIs, banks and member-owned organizations in Asia, East Africa and Latin America. Previously, she served as the Director of the UN Capital Development Fund's Special Unit for Microfinance and worked as a Senior Technical Advisor with UNDP and USAID. She is a long standing faculty member of the Boulder Institute where she teaches a course targeted to donors, and she taught microfinance at Columbia University and American University. Heather has an M.A. from The Johns Hopkins University, School for Advanced International Studies in International Economics. Heather has worked closely with CGAP’s aid effectiveness initiative from its inception, including serving as a peer reviewer and receiving a Microfinance Donor Peer Review, drafting donor good practice case studies, and writing Donor Briefs.  She is a SmartAid Review Board member. Heather reads all submissions, scores agencies, and contributes to the final reports.

Mayada El-Zoghbi (SmartAid Team)
Mayada joined CGAP as a senior microfinance specialist based in Paris and working with the Donor and Investor Team. With over 15 years of experience in microfinance, Mayada brings operational, management, research, and funder advisory experience to CGAP. Previously, Mayada El-Zoghbi was a founding partner of Banyan Global, a development consulting firm with offices in New York and the Washington, DC area. She has directly managed the start-up and growth of MFIs in Bosnia & Herzegovina and Kosovo. In the past eight years, Mayada has been working to support microfinance organizations, donors and investors in numerous countries in Africa, the Middle East, and Central and Eastern Europe. For the past three years, she was adjunct associate professor at Columbia's School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA) teaching courses on microfinance. Mayada holds a Master’s of International Affairs from SIPA at Columbia University and a BS in Business from the University of Minnesota. Mayada leads the SmartAid Team, and supports participating funders and the Review Board. 

Barbara Gähwiler (SmartAid Team)
Barbara joined CGAP’s Donors and Investors team in Paris in 2008. She is in charge of the team’s communications, monitoring and evaluation, and helps disseminate good practice standards and operational resources to donors and investors. Previously, Barbara worked in corporate communications in the financial sector and conducted an analysis of the tourism market for Swisscontact in Bolivia. She has Master’s degrees in International Affairs from the University of St. Gallen and the Institute of Political Science in Paris, where she specialized in development studies. Barbara is fluent in German, English and French, with working knowledge of Spanish. Barbara helped prepare and launch SmartAid 2009. She is responsible for managing SmartAid submissions and maintains close contacts with participating funders. Barbara also provides inputs to key SmartAid documents and helps market the Index.

Alumni

Alexia Latortue
Alexia currently acts as CGAP's Deputy CEO. Alexia moved to Washington, D.C., recently after spending four years running CGAP’s Paris office where she led CGAP’s work on improving the effectiveness of funding for microfinance.  Alexia provides strategic and technical services to a broad range of funders and has written extensively on aid effectiveness in microfinance.  Before joining CGAP, she was a development specialist with Development Alternatives, Inc, where she worked with a range of financial service providers in Haiti.  She has a master’s degree in Development Economics from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University and speaks French, Creole, and German, and has rudimentary Spanish. Alexia helped launch CGAP’s work with funders in 2002 and has been involved in all aspects of it, including managing the Microfinance Donor Peer Reviews, helping to draft the Good Practice Guidelines for Microfinance Funders, overseeing the production of operational resources for funders, delivering training, and participating in country-level effectiveness reviews.  Alexia is the initiator of SmartAid and is also a SmartAid Review Board member. Alexia reads all submissions, scores agencies, and contributes to the final reports.

Rich Rosenberg (Review Board SmartAid 2007 and 2009)
Rich joined CGAP at the time of its launch in 1995 and is a Senior Advisor.  He has produced over two dozen publications on microfinance.  Rich is deeply familiar with how development agencies function, having worked with the United States Agency for International Development, where he specialized in development finance in Latin America and elsewhere.  He has worked with two dozen microfinance institutions, as funder or consultant.  Rich is a core faculty member of the Boulder Institute’s annual Microfinance Training.  Prior to turning to development and microfinance, he practiced law in Chicago and did investment management in Washington.  Rich holds a law degree from Harvard University, and speaks Spanish. Rich conducted several microfinance portfolio reviews of funders. He captured the results and learning of two portfolio reviews in “Aid Effectiveness in Microfinance: Evaluating Microcredit Projects of the World Bank and the United Nations Development Program.” Rich has also reviewed and contributed to numerous Donor Briefs and authored the draft core performance indicators for microfinance.  Rich is a SmartAid Review Board member. He reads all submissions, scores agencies, and contributes to the final reports.

Ruth Goodwin-Groen (Review Board SmartAid 2007 and 2009)
Ruth has worked on building inclusive financial systems in Africa, Asia and Central Europe with a wide range of funders (bilaterals, multilaterals, foundations and networks) over the past 15 years. Assignments have ranged from training retail providers of microfinance and funders, designing and evaluating microfinance projects, to analyzing new policies which affect access to finance for low income clients. Ruth has an MBA with distinction from Harvard Business School. She is currently undertaking a Ph.D. in Economics and International Development from the University of Bath (U.K.). Ruth has worked closely with CGAP’s aid effectiveness initiative from its inception, authoring Donor Briefs and donor good practice case studies, conducting effectiveness reviews at both the country and headquarters level, and helping to shape and deliver training tailored for funders. She is a SmartAid Review Board member. Ruth reads all submissions, scores agencies, and contributes to the final reports

Tillman Bruett (SmartAid Team, SmartAid 2007)
Till co-founded Alternative Credit Technologies (ACT) in 2000 to provide consulting services in the field of microfinance and microenterprise development.  Till works with microfinance institutions, banks, and microenterprise support projects to develop business plans, establish programs, develop products, train staff and strengthen monitoring and controls.  In addition, he works with microfinance networks, private and public funders, and governments, providing strategic advice and operational support, designing programs, and conducting  evaluations.  Till is an adjunct professor at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.  Previously, he worked with FINCA International and Chemical Bank in New York.  Till has an M.A. from The Johns Hopkins University, School for Advanced International Studies in International Economics and European Studies and speaks German and Spanish. Till has worked as a consultant with CGAP's Donors and Investors team over the past four years, conducting a country level effectiveness review and a donor portfolio review and drafting technical guides for funders before joining the SmartAid team.  Till helped finalize the Index, draft all submission documents and the scoring guidelines, review all submissions, and contributed to the final reports.

Claudia Huber (SmartAid Team, SmartAid 2007)
Claudia joined CGAP’s Donors and Investors team in Paris in 2006.  She serves as relationship manager to several funders and helps disseminate good practice messages and operational resources to donors and investors.  Before, she held a scholarship from the German National Academic Foundation and the Bosch Foundation.  During her scholarship, Claudia worked with Banco los Andes ProCredit in Bolivia where she got trained as a credit officer and with KfW.  Claudia has a Master's degree in Business Administration/Economics and a CEMS Master in International Management from the University of St. Gallen and has studied in Argentina, Spain and Switzerland.  Claudia is fluent in German, French and Spanish. Claudia has been a core SmartAid team member shaping the development of the Index since the beginning.  She participated in drafting the concept note for the Index and bringing in learning from other indices. Claudia helped manage the roll-out of SmartAid 2007, including contributing to key submission documents and the final reports.