The Secretariat has 4 full-time and 10 part-time staff members:
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Laura Foose, Executive Director |
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Jurgen HAMMER, Managing Director, SPTF Europe |
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Amelia Greenberg, Deputy Director Director of the Responsible Inclusive Finance Facility for Africa and Middle East |
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Cara S. Forster, Director for Outreach to Latin America Director of the Responsible Inclusive Finance Facility for Central America and the Caribbean |
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Nitin Madan, Director of the Responsible Inclusive Finance Facility for Southeast Asia |
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Anne-Laure Behaghel, Client Protection Pathway Manager |
Ally Ryder, SPTF Associate Manager, Client Protection Pathway | |
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Diana Summerlin, SPTF Coordinator |
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Jill E. Greenberg, Membership Director |
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Tony Sheldon, Advisor to the Secretariat and SPTF Board of Directors Liaison |
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Gladys Bessane, Responsible Inclusive Finance Facility for Africa and Middle East Implementation Support |
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Aracely Castillo, Responsible Inclusive Finance Facility for Central America and the Caribbean Implementation Support and Executive Director of REDCAMIF |
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Anton Simanowitz, Director of Customer Centricity |
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Michele Giroux, SPTF Annual Meeting Coordinator, Communications Support |
Laura Foose has been the Executive Director of the Social Performance Task Force since 2005. She has twenty-five years of experience in program management, policy design, training, and advocacy in promoting private sector development and poverty alleviation in developing and transition countries. She has run a number of microfinance industry working groups focused on standards development for social performance management, consumer protection, client centricity, poverty alleviation, impact investing and reporting. Prior to SPTF, she was a partner of Alternative Credit Technologies for ten years where she designed microfinance projects, conducted evaluations of MFIs, and was a working group facilitator for the SEEP Network in the areas of poverty assessment/outreach. As Secretariat of the Microenterprise Coalition at FINCA International for five years, Ms. Foose represented microfinance practitioners and advocacy organizations to donor agencies, the U.S. Administration, and members of the U.S. Congress and helped to draft the Microenterprise for Self Reliance Act that governed US development programs.
Ms. Foose has extensive experience as a professor and trainer with 15+ years in workshops design, training, and curricula development mainly in the fields of microfinance and development, financial inclusion, and business management. She is a professor of Financial Inclusion at Georgetown University; a professor of Ethics and Leadership at George Mason University for The Fund for American Studies; a co-founder of Woman Advancing Microfinance; and on the Steering Committee of “The Impact Reporting and Investment Standards (IRIS) project” of The Global Impact and Investing Network.
Ms. Foose holds an M.S. in Foreign Service from Georgetown University, with specializations in international economics and business, and a B.A. from Brown University, where she graduated with a double major in economics and international relations. She is based in Washington, DC.
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Jurgen HAMMER is the Managing Director of SPTF Europe in charge of the European office in Luxembourg. He manages the Social Investor Working Group of the SPTF with the investor co-chairs.
From 2008 to 2019, Jurgen was Chief Risk Officer and Head of SPM at Grameen Credit Agricole Foundation (GCAF). Jurgen’s involvement in financial inclusion started in 2006 at EFSE, an investment fund for the Balkans. In 2008 he managed the TA program at JAIDA, the investment fund for microfinance associations in Morocco. Jurgen continued as an independent Board member of JAIDA until 2016. He also serves as an Independent Member of the Board at ACAD in Palestine. He has over 15 years of experience in corporate and investment banking at Deutsche Bank, Senior Banker at Banco Santander and Co-Head of Fixed Income and Securitization at CACIB working with Sovereigns, FIs and Corporates in Eastern Europe, Africa and the Middle East. Jurgen holds an MBA in International Business from City University New York-Baruch, and a Master in Applied Economics from Paris University, Dauphine.
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Amelia Greenberg Ms. Amelia Greenberg is the Deputy Director of the Social Performance Task Force (SPTF), where she has worked since 2010. Prior to joining SPTF, Ms. Greenberg was a strategy consultant for nonprofit organizations working in a variety of sectors, notably education, health care, and after school. Ms. Greenberg also has six years of experience as an economic consultant, primarily in the areas of international trade, wrongful termination, and finance. While in graduate school, Ms. Greenberg also worked on several projects related to evaluating microfinance programs. Ms. Greenberg has an M.A. in international relations from Johns Hopkins University, with specializations in international economics and international development, and a B.A. from Brandeis University, where she graduated summa cum laude with a double major in economics and French literature. Ms. Greenberg speaks French fluently and has a working knowledge of Spanish.
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Cara S. Forster has been consulting with SPTF since June 2010 and joined the Secretariat in October 2012. Her previous work experience includes two years at the SEEP Network where she managed capacity building projects for microfinance networks on the topics of client protection and social performance. During this time, she was also the Global Facilitator for the Social Performance Working Group for Networks, a platform for collective action among more than 50 microfinance networks worldwide.
Prior to SEEP, Ms. Forster spent two years at ACCION International, where she helped launch the Center for Financial Inclusion and the Smart Campaign and pioneered the assessment methodology for client protection in microfinance. From 2004 to 2008, she worked for an environmental consulting company where her work focused on project evaluation, indicator design, and case study development for various EPA programs. Ms. Forster's interest in microfinance began with her Peace Corps service in Nicaragua from 1999-2001, where she coordinated a small savings and loan cooperative for single mothers.
Ms. Forster received a master's in environmental management from Duke University with a specialization in sustainable development. She graduated from Harvard College with a bachelor's degree in environmental science and public policy. Ms. Forster is fluent in Spanish and is based in Seattle, Washington.
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Nitin Madan is a financial inclusion specialist, who has spent over 17 years across developing countries, particularly South and South-East Asia. He has worked across various roles, as a Consultant, COO, Country Manager, and Project Manager, including in assessments and certifications, operations, policy advocacy, project management, technical advisory/capacity building, and research. Nitin has also worked with a varied range of stakeholders including bilateral and multilateral agencies, country associations, development finance institutions, impact investors, policymakers, private sector organisations, on various financial inclusion aspects related to responsible inclusive finance, MSME access to finance, and DFS.
Nitin is also a consultant with the United Nations ESCAP on gender mainstreaming of entrepreneurship and SME related policies for the Government of Cambodia and is their Technical Advisor on women's entrepreneurship. He also has several research publications to his name, including on regulation and digital payments in LDCs. Prior to this, he has worked with organisations such as Aajeevika Bureau, ICICI Bank, and M-CRIL. Nitin has a Masters in Poverty and Development from the Institute of Development Studies in the UK. He is based in Phnom Penh, Cambodia.
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Anne-Laure Behaghel has worked extensively to advance client protection practices in financial services since 2013. She is a financial inclusion specialist, who has been working in the industry for the past 15 years, including 6 years in developing countries. She started working in the field of inclusive finance by setting-up two greenfield microfinance institutions, one in Mexico and the other in Senegal, taking up the position of CFO in both institutions. She then joined Kiva, the pioneer in crowdfunding for microfinance, for whom she developed the portfolio in African French-speaking countries, conducting both social and investment due diligence to identify partners with a double bottom-line objective.
She works mainly with impact investors for their due diligence and provides technical advisory services, in particular in the field of small-holder farmer finance.
Anne-Laure holds a Master's degree from ESCP, one of the top-ranked Business Schools in Europe. She speaks English, French, Spanish, Polish and German and is currently learning Portuguese, being based out of Porto, Portugal.
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Ally Ryder is a consultant working in the digital financial inclusion space and has been with the Social Performance Task Force since 2020. She also works with the Microfinance and Digital team at the International Finance Corporation, leading their knowledge management efforts. She previously worked for J.P. Morgan Chase in Global Trade Finance. Ally holds a Finance degree from Loyola University Chicago and a Masters degree in Global Human Development from Georgetown University's Walsh School of Foreign Service. Ally is based in Washington, DC.
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Diana Summerlin has worked for the SPTF since 2008. Her primary role is assisting in logistics management, communication and systems development. Prior to joining the SPTF, she worked for FINCA International, a microfinance network based in Washington, DC where she assisted the Executive Director with HQ and affiliate outreach and coordination and administrative support. She also worked as a professional translator/interpreter for Children’s Hospital at Erlanger, guiding non-English or limited English speaking patients through hospital admissions and navigating cultural issues related to health care on behalf of patients and their caregivers. Diana has her Bachelor of Arts in Business Administration from University of San Diego in San Diego, California. She is fluent in Spanish and is based in Chattanooga, Tennessee.
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Jill E. Greenberg has worked for SPTF since 2012 providing tech solutions and communications. Since the 2018 launch of SPTF's new organizational membership model, she also organizes and oversees SPTF's membership systems and outreach. Outside her work with SPTF, Jill freelances with education- and psychology-related nonprofits and is the co-founder of Highwell, a new global network focused on promoting and improving applications of well-being psychology in higher education. In 2017, she earned her master's degree in applied positive psychology from University of Pennsylvania, where she focused on systems-level applications in education. Prior to that, she earned a bachelor's degree in psychology from Tufts University. She is based in San Francisco, California.
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Tony Sheldon has been Advisor to the SPTF Secretariat since 2005. He is the Executive Director of the Program on Social Enterprise & Lecturer in Economic Development at the Yale School of Management. He is also the founder and principal of Bering Consulting. Since 1990, Bering Consulting has been working with microfinance institutions in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and Eastern Europe, primarily in the areas of financial management and business planning. Mr. Sheldon has also worked with several development finance networks and funders, including the Ford Foundation, ShoreBank International, the Small Enterprise Education ad Promotion Network, Women's World Banking, the Consultative Group to Assist the Poor (CGAP), and the World Bank. His publications include CGAP's Handbook on Business Planning and Financial Modeling for Microfinance Institutions, the Small Enterprise Education and Promotion Network's Financial Ratio Analysis of Microfinance Institutions, and Women's World Banking's Principles and Practices of Financial Management. Mr. Sheldon has a Masters in Public and Private Management from Yale and an AB from Princeton University. He speaks French and some Spanish and is based in Sheffield, Massachusetts.
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Gladys Bessane was born in Guadeloupe (French west Indies Island) and has lived both in Africa and Europe. She studied Business Management and basics of psychology in France. Gladys holds both French and Senegalese citizenships.
Prior joining SPTF, Gladys worked as back office administrator and Technical assistant for different investment Funds, domiciliate in Mauritius. Since 2011, Gladys is an entrepreneur assisting companies to organize their events and /or run their administrative department. She is based in Senegal.
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Aracely Castillo coordinates the Fund for Responsible and Inclusive Finance in Central America and the Caribbean (FFRI-CAC) since 2018, a fund that is executed by the SPTF and REDCAMIF, which aims to strengthen the trainings and practices of inclusive financial service providers in the region.
She is currently working for REDCAMIF as Head of the Regional Program "Improvement of social value added to Microfinance in Central America and the Dominican Republic", a program that is executed by ADA and REDCAMIF. This program has supported the microfinance sector in innovation with very good results in inclusive financial services, Digital Transformation, Risk Management, Improvement of Governance, Social Performance Management, as well as the strengthening and sustainability of Microfinance Networks.
She is certified by the Smart Campaign to carry out client protection evaluations and is a Qualified Auditor by CERISE to carry out social audits with the SPI4 tool, having evaluated important institutions and banks in the region on these issues.
Her early stages in Microfinance come from managing of a Microfinance Institution in Nicaragua and the creation of the SME Management in a Commercial Bank. She is based in Nicaragua.
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Anton Simanowitz works globally to improve the effectiveness of a range of impact-driven organisations in delivering impact, with a particular focus on financial inclusion. Building on over 20 years of experience in impact measurement and management he supports organisations to embed systems that align commercial and impact goals, and for investors and policy makers to support the conditions for this to happen. Anton’s past roles include Impact Director with SEF, a South African microfinance institution with 120,000 clients, lead actor in developing the Universal Standards for Social Performance Management now widely adopted in the financial inclusion sector, designing and leading an impact audit of major UK social investment fund, engagement with investees to improve impact management for Dutch social investor, Oikocredit, and work on customer centricity with the World Bank. Most recently Anton was Director of Learning for Impact and Scale for BRAC, the world’s largest development NGO. Anton is author of The Business of Doing Good.
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Michele Giroux has worked on building awareness of the Universal Standards at the SPTF since 2012. She manages logistics for the SPTF annual meetings and worked with the communications team to launch the new website as well as the SPTF Newsletter and Spotlight. Prior to working with the SPTF, Michele managed winning proposal and grant writing projects (including the $2 billion Woodrow Wilson Bridge Project); co-created and co-facilitated a comprehensive presentation skills training program; analyzed and edited websites; and other communications and marketing consulting projects. Michele earned her Bachelor of Science in Economics at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia.
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