The annual Social Performance Task Force meeting in 2008 included significant discussion around the upcoming roles and responsibilities of the task force, ways to ensure accountability, and what governance structure should be put in place.  To address these questions, the "SPTF Going Forward” working group was formed and given the task of creating a Steering Committee that would be representative of all stakeholders.

 

The “SPTF Going Forward” working group proposed that the SPTF be structured similarly to other international standard setting bodies, such as the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB).  After reviewing the structure of these entities and receiving feedback from task force members during the nominations process, the following framework is being proposed:

• 13 Member Steering Committee: The SPTF would be governed by an 13 member steering committee with members from every region if possible, and a fixed number of representatives from each of the major stakeholder categories: 
  • 2 MFIs: 1 NGO and 1 NBFI or bank
  • 2 NGO networks
  • 3 MFI networks: 1 Global, 1 Regional and 1 National
  • 2 donors
  • 2 social investors
  • 2 from social performance support organizations (e.g., research organizations, reporting organizations such as the MIX and GRI, raters, and support networks such as Imp-Act and CERISE) 

DONOR / FOUNDATION

• The Ford Foundation, Frank DeGiovanni (Chair)
• CGAP, Xavier Reille

 

NGO NETWORK

• Grameen Foundation, Nigel Biggar

 

NETWORKS

Global

• MicroFinance Network, Masami Hayashi
• SEEP Network, Bill Tucker

Regional

• MicroFinance Centre (MFC), Katarzyna Pawlak

National

• Finrural, Reynaldo Marconi

 

MFI PRACTITIONER

Bank or NBFI

• AMK, Paul Luchtenburg

NGO MFI

• Pro Mujer Bolivia, Carmen Velasco

 

SOCIAL INVESTOR

• INCOFIN, David Dewez
• responsAbility, Cecile Koller

 

Microfinance Industry Support Organizations

• The MIX, Micol Pistelli
• M-CRIL, Frances Sinha

Frank DeGiovanni

Frank F. DeGiovanni is Director of the Economic Development unit of the Ford Foundation’s Asset Building and Community Development Program. The unit seeks to make durable economic improvements in the lives of disadvantaged people and in their communities by supporting, through grants and Program Related Investments (PRIs), a set of focused initiatives in development finance, consumer financial services, enterprise development, workforce development, housing, and savings and individual asset development. He also currently serves as Chair of the Executive Committee of the Consultative Group to Assist the Poor (CGAP).

Prior to assuming his current position, he was Deputy Director of Program Related Investments at the Ford Foundation, 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 1992, DeGiovanni was associate professor and senior research associate at the New School for Social Research in New York City. DeGiovanni has a Ph.D. and M.R.P. in city and regional planning from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.

 

 

Xavier Reille

Xavier Reille joined CGAP in 1999 and leads CGAP’s Transparency Team and chairs the board of directors of the Microfinance Information eXchange. He is also the director of the CGAP MENA Initiative. Before joining CGAP, he was the regional microfinance adviser for Southeast Asia with Catholic Relief Services. Reille has a master’s degree in International Finance from the University of Paris. He speaks French, Spanish, English, and Bahasa Indonesian

 

 

 

 

Nigel Biggar

Nigel Biggar has over 17 years working with microenterprise and microfinance in developing countries. He began in this field working as a microentrepreneur with a street youth project he established in Quito, Ecuador in the early 1990s. He has worked extensively with MFIs and microentrepreneurs and street youth in Latin America and Asia.

Nigel has been with Grameen Foundation since early 2000. He is currently the Director of the Social Performance Management Center and the principal for the Social Performance/ Progress out of Poverty Index initiative. He previously served as Grameen Foundation’s Regional Director for the Americas where he assisted start-up MFIs in Latin America to build and expand their programs based on the Grameen methodology. He holds a masters degree in Development Studies from the Institute of Development Studies at Sussex University.

 

 

 

 

 

Masami Hayashi

Masami Hayashi is director of the MicroFinance Network (MFN), an international association of leading microfinance institutions. MFN was founded in 1993 in order to provide the members with opportunities to learn from each other and to contribute to development of the microfinance industry. As of May 2009, MFN has 34 members from 31 countries.

At the Social Performance Task Force, Masami participated in the annual meetings in 2007 and 2008, and has been part of the Social Indicators Subcommittee and the SPTF Going Forward Subcommittee. She has been representing the voices of the MFN members who believe that an MFI can broaden its social scope and outreach by establishing a well-managed, sustainable and profitable institution.

Prior to joining the MFN, Masami served as a programme officer at UNDP Mexico for three years, where she was involved in planning, monitoring and evaluation, and change management. She has also worked at Japanese commercial banks for three years. Masami holds a BA of Laws from the University of Tokyo and an MPhil of Development Studies from the Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex.

 

 

 

Bill Tucker

Bill Tucker is the Executive Director of The SEEP Network. He has 30+ years of microfinance experience with ACCION, WOCCU and NCBA, all SEEP members. He has worked in over 40 developing countries, having lived 26 years in Colombia, Peru, Bolivia and Egypt. Bill was instrumental in the creation of both MiBanco in Peru and BancoSol in Bolivia. In 1977, the Colombian micro-lending program in which Bill worked provided 52 loans in its first year of operation. In 1984, the profitable microfinance program Bill directed in Egypt disbursed 1,500 micro-loans per day, generating an annual lending volume of a quarter of a billion US dollars.

Bill holds an MBA from George Washington University and a BS in International Business from Syracuse University. He is an instructor at the “Boulder” Microfinance Training held in Italy and Latin America, and he has been a presenter at multiple international events.

 

 

 

 

Katarzyna Pawlak

Katarzyna Pawlak, deputy director of the Microfinance Centre, a regional network for Europe and Asia. She is an MBA with ten years of practical experience in microfinance related to organizational management, program design and implementation. Since 2001 Katarzyna has been actively engaged in advancing Social Performance Management in ECA and globally through implementation of global and regional programs, engagement in a wide range of promotional activities, leadership and participation in various Social Performance related initiatives. She’s been a member of the Task Force since its inception, sits on the Imp-Act Consortium Management Committee and is actively involved in the SEEP Working Group on Social Performance.  She authored or co-authored various publications, tools and training courses related to Social Performance Management including the Imp-Act/MFC Social Performance Management Guidelines and From Mission to Action Management Series promoting Strategic Management for Double-bottom Line and Quality Audit Tools. 

 

 

 

Reynaldo Marconi

Reynaldo Marconi has led the Association of Financial Institutions for Rural Development, FINRURAL, since 1995. He is also currently the President of the Information Credit Bureau, INFOCRED BIC.S.A, in Bolivia. From 2002 to September 2007, he was the President of the Council of Directors of the Latin American and the Caribbean Rural Finance Forum, FOROLAC FR, which is a network of networks and institutions specializing in rural financial services in Latin America. He has written numerous books and documents on microfinance, regulation, rural finance, impact evaluations and social performance. He has degrees in Economics from the Universidad de Paris X Nanterre, France and in Law from the Universidad Franz Tamayo in Bolivia. He is Bolivian.

 

 

 

Paul Luchtenburg

Paul serves as the CEO for AMK which is a Cambodia based Microfinance Institution.  AMK has had a strong social mission since it started MF operations in 2003.  The organization specializes in delivering financial services to rural poor and currently serves more than 200,000 clients with average loan sizes of $125.  AMK continues to have a passionate interest in SPM and has a dedicated research department and a dedicated Social Performance Committee as part of the board.

Previous to AMK Cambodia Paul provided microfinance support for numerous organizations covering an area from Mongolia to Kosovo.  His practical experience includes hands on work at nearly every level of MFI development and has worked with various methodologies and complementary strategies such as HIV/AIDS and MF.  His interest in a double bottom line stemmed from his work in the formative days with the Credit with Education methodology. 

Overall, Paul has worked for more than 20 years in the field of community and economic development in various contexts and holds an MBA from Eastern University in the USA and has contributed to a number of different books on microfinance.

 

 

 

Carmen Velasco

Carmen Velasco, Co-founder and Director of Pro Mujer in Latin America, spent the first part of her career teaching at the Bolivian Catholic University before she teamed up with Lynne Patterson to develop training programs for women. Carmen was the co-founder of Pro Mujer in Bolivia, which has been fully sustainable since 1998, and she has also been responsible for providing technical assistance to Pro Mujer’s microfinance institutions in Argentina, Mexico, Nicaragua and Peru. Under her leadership, Pro Mujer in Bolivia, has achieved a world-wide reputation for excellence. Recently, Carmen assumed her new role as the Co-Director of Pro Mujer International. Based in Pro Mujer’s new regional office in Bolivia, she is responsible for supporting operations, for new product development, and for implementation of all network systems in each of the 5 countries where Pro Mujer is established. Carmen has a Bachelor’s degree in Educational Psychology from the University of Chile.

 

 

 

David Dewez

David Dewez joined Incofin in 2007 as an investment manager for South America, the Caribbean and Southern Africa. Prior to Incofin, David worked for 6 years as a Senior Director at ACCION International. In this function, he provided technical assistance to MFIs in various countries including Bolivia, Haiti, Ecuador, Peru, Uganda, El Salvador, Guyana, Trinidad and Tobago. His expertise include methodological auditing, microfinance product design, market research, training ,and the development of a social performance tool (ACCION Social). David was also Coordinator of the Acción Network, a leading Microfinance network of 21 MFIs members. Prior to joining ACCION, he worked as a microfinance researcher at International Development Research Center (IDRC), a Canadian research center, and is the author of various microfinance related topics publications. David holds a MA in Economics from Laval University (Canada). He is fluent in Spanish, French and English.

 

 

 

Cécile Koller

Cécile Koller is heading responsAbility’s research department. Her responsibilities include the monitoring of established investment themes such as microfinance and fair trade as well as the identification of new investment topics. Further she oversees the company’s country risk management system as well as the company’s social performance reporting activities. Cecile joined the responsAbility in 2005, initially as investment analyst for Latin America.

Cecile studied history and economics and holds a MA from the University of Zurich. She started her professional career in sustainability and strategic consulting and acted as program manager of an international sustainability conference. Prior to joining responsAbility, Cecile was working for an NGO in Buenos Aires, where she was involved in the education and training program for micro entrepreneurs.

 

 

 

 

Micol Pistelli

Micol Pistelli is the manager of the Social Performance Standards Program at MIX. Micol started to work in international development for the Department of Development Cooperation at the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. She has worked as microfinance consultant at the Italian Embassy in Egypt, at Fundacion Paraguaya in Paraguay and at the Microfinance Management Institute (MFMI) in Washington DC.

She earned her B.A. in Political Science from the University of Bologna in Italy and her M.A. in International Economics and International Development from SAIS-Johns Hopkins University in Washington DC.

 

 

 

 

Frances Sinha

Frances Sinha is co-founder director of EDA Rural Systems, and director of EDA’s associate company M-CRIL.

With 25 years of experience in development based in India, Frances is closely involved with current initiatives around social performance in microfinance, including: social performance management – training and research (as a member of the Imp-Act consortium); pioneering the development of a social rating methodology to complement financial rating, with the M-CRIL team; coordinating pilot initiatives and contributing to development of social reporting indicators (Ford Foundation, the MiX Market; and leading the EDA team in working with social investors and their MFI partners in India and Afghanistan to develop practical systems of SPM and social reporting, including introducing the Progress out of Poverty Index (PPI) (with the Grameen Foundation (US)).

On-going programmes that she is associated with include: the Rockefeller Foundation (to develop social reporting metrics and standards for ‘Impact Investing”), the MicroCredit Summit (Poverty Assessment Panel, India), Shorecap Exchange (Research Advisory Group for tracking employment outreach of SME lending) AMK, Cambodia (member of the Social Performance Committee).