2008 CGAP Microfinance Photo Contest Judges

Bob Annibale / www.citigroup.com
As Citigroup’s Global Director of Microfinance, Bob Annibale is a leading figure in the world of microfinance. He joined Citibank in 1982 and has held a number of senior treasury, risk, and corporate positions, living and working in Athens, Bahrain, Nairobi, London, and New York. As the organization’s in-house microfinance expert, he represents Citigroup on the Microfinance Network—a global association of microfinance institutions—as well as on the Board of the Microfinance Information Exchange and on the Council of Microfinance Equity Funds. He also represents Citigroup on several community and regeneration boards in London. He is a member of CGAP’s Executive Committee.

In addition to his financial expertise, he also has extensive experience in academic and governmental circles, serving on the UK Government’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office Africa Policy Group and on the boards of the University of London, the Institute of Commonwealth Studies, and Oxford University’s St. Anthony’s College (Centre for the Study of African Economies). Born and brought up in New York, he earned a degree in History and Political Science from Vassar College, followed by a Master’s degree in African History from the University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies.

Deborah Burand / www.law.umich.edu
Deborah Burand recently joined the Law School faculty of the University of Michigan, where she has launched the International Transactions Clinic. Before joining the University of Michigan, she was the executive vice president of programs of the Grameen Foundation, where she oversaw its Program Department, Technology Center, and Capital Markets Group. Burand also is a co-founder and president of Women Advancing Microfinance International, an organization dedicated to supporting female professionals in the microfinance industry. She also is chairman of the Board of Microfinance Opportunities and is a member of the Investment Committee of the Global Commercial Microfinance Consortium (a $75 million microfinance investment fund managed by Deutsche Bank). Before entering the microfinance industry in 2001, Burand spent 15 years working in the fields of international finance, law, and bank regulation in the public and private sectors. She has held senior positions at the U.S. Federal Reserve Board and the U.S. Treasury Department. She also has worked as an international corporate attorney at the global law firm Shearman & Sterling.

Gary Cameron / www.reuters.com
Gary Cameron, the first photojournalism graduate from San Francisco State University, began his career as a photographer covering local, regional, national, and sports stories for the Washington Post. In 1990, Cameron joined Reuters, covering the White House under the Bush (41) and Clinton administrations, as well as major sports events, such as the Super Bowl, World Series, and the Summer and Winter Olympics. Cameron has been in an editor’s role for Reuters since 1999. Cameron has won photographic awards from the White House Press Photographers Association, the National Press Photographers Association, and the World Press contest. He currently lives in Silver Spring, Maryland, with his wife Joann, and they have one son.

Jez Coulson / Jezblog.com
Jez Coulson is an internationally renowned reportage artist. He has won numerous awards for photojournalism, including for coverage of conflict and the political situation in Gaza, Northern Ireland, South Africa, Bosnia, and Rwanda. His work has been featured in the world’s leading magazines. Most recently, images from his coverage of Guantanamo Bay appeared in Newsweek and Time, as well as in the UK’s Sunday Times and the Guardian magazine. His work has been exhibited in over 30 countries. Coulson is currently based in New York and Washington, D.C., and is completing a major exhibition for and about the New York subway Coulson’s photography is represented by the UK and US Agent Insight-Visual.

Gail Fisher / www.nationalgeographic.com
Gail Fisher, senior editor, photography, for National Geographic, recently made the move from the world of newspapers to magazines. Formerly senior photo editor of projects for the Los Angeles Times, she covered social issues throughout the world during the course of her career. She has traveled extensively throughout Asia, the Middle East, Africa, and South and Central America. Her editing skills and photography have been recognized internationally with numerous awards, judging, teaching, and speaking engagements. In 2006, she was awarded Best of Photojournalism Picture Editor of the Year, in 2005, runner-up. In 2006 the Altered Oceans series for which Fisher worked as photo editor was awarded a Pulitzer Prize in Explanatory Journalism. And, in 2005, the investigative King Drew project, on which Fisher worked, was honored with the Pulitzer Public Service award. The Los Angeles Times was awarded the Angus McDougall Excellence in Picture Editing from Pictures of the Year International three times in the last five years along with several other international and national awards. Fisher played a role in editing many of those projects.

Some of her accomplishments as a photojournalist include the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award for outstanding coverage of the disadvantaged, the Rosalynn Carter Fellowship for Mental Health Journalism, the Harry Chapin World Hunger Award, and the Community Awareness Award in 1996 and 2002 from the National Press Photographers Pictures of the Year. She has also received recognition for several online projects in which she was involved as an editor and photojournalist. A native of Akron, Ohio, Fisher earned her B.A. in Liberal Arts from Miami University of Ohio and an M.F.A. in Photojournalism from Ohio University. She has two children, Whitney and Zack.

Oxana Holtmann / www.movingplanetfilms.com
Born in the Siberian city of Novosibirsk, Oxana Holtmann got her B.A. from her hometown university and her Master’s degree in Chinese studies from Moscow State University. She worked for several years as an English-language instructor and interpreter in Russia. Oxana made the transition from language to film in fall 2005 when she took a Sony PD170 to East Africa to videotape the story of the fastest growing microfinance bank in Kenya. Several of her subsequent African projects were produced in close cooperation with MicroSave, Kenya.
Holtmann is a member of Women in Film and Video of Washington, D.C.; Television, Internet and Video Association of D.C.; and the D.C. Podcaster Alliance.

Elizabeth Littlefield / www.cgap.org
Elizabeth Littlefield is the chief executive officer of CGAP and a director of the World Bank. Previously she was the managing director of JP Morgan’s Emerging Markets Capital Markets in London. As such, she was responsible for all bond offerings, structured financing, and credit ratings for emerging Europe, Middle East, Africa, and Central Asia. She and her team won and executed more than 80 percent of all bond issues in these regions in the 1990s. Earlier, Littlefield spent a year-and-a-half living in West and Central Africa starting up and advising microfinance institutions. She has served on many corporate and nonprofit boards and founded several not-for-profit organizations. A U.S. and U.K. citizen, Littlefield is a graduate of Brown University in Rhode Island and also studied at the École Nationale de Sciences Politiques in Paris.