Grace Akinyi
Grace spent a good part of her career in the banking sector, leading operations and […]
Grace spent a good part of her career in the banking sector, leading operations and compliance teams. During her tenure as a senior executive, she spearheaded the implementation of Agency and mobile banking to extend financial services to the last mile in Tanzania.
Her DFS experiences from Africa grew better mileage in Papua New Guinea when she designed, developed and implemented a functional banking access point network coupled with a new customer onboarding process in six of the provinces. She takes joy and pride in being able to narrow the gaps of financial access for the marginalised women, youth and the vulnerable communities through her work at PHB. Most notably, she has designed financial products tailored to refugees' needs and realities in Uganda, one of the largest host countries for refugees. The financial product distributed through the most adapted channels links the local markets to improve refugee contribution, local economy and the value chains ultimately benefiting the host communities as well.
Grace is an alumna of ABA Stonier Graduate School of Banking. She holds an MBA and a bachelor's degree in Business Administration.
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Frances Imokol
Frances grew up in the pearl of Africa, home of the crane and the land […]
Frances grew up in the pearl of Africa, home of the crane and the land of green pastures, rich in culture and hospitality, Uganda. She has a strong sense of purpose and strives to achieve the highest result for every task. Frances has a particular interest to make financial services transcend technology to serve and improve the quality of life for those who are in need.
She harnessed her analytical skills from the stints at various banks based on a quantitative approach to serve clients with the result in mind. Her digital financial expertise cuts through experiences on delivery channels, Mobile, and Agent Banking solutions. She significantly contributed to developing the dairy value chain finance and improving the livelihood of refugees in Uganda. Her work has involved translating the needs of Social Transfers for different human segments including; MSMEs, Farmers, Youth, Women, Refugees and host communities, People with disabilities and the elderly with concrete financial and operational processes, and setting up platforms for transactions. Frances' satisfaction peaked when her work yielded increased use and uptake of digital products and operationalization of thousands of clients. The intervention boosted monthly incomes of various stakeholders in the ecosystem of SACCOs, VSLAs, Hospitals, Traders, Schools and individuals in rural, peri-urban and rural communities. It led to a partnership in financing with international partners – OI, StrongMinds, Swisscontact and aBi Trust, and with the Bank of Uganda appreciating digital banking in its regulatory framework.
Frances attended excellent formal education with high morals and values. With a "never give up" motto from high school, she graduated with a high achieving mentality. It's with this background that she went on to pursue a degree in quantitative economics and a master's degree in business administration. Frances, like many Africans, is multi-lingual and fluent in English, Luganda, and Lumasaba.
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Sunil C. Sharma
Sunil is a visual communicator. He implements communication projects at PHB. Since he arrived at […]
Sunil is a visual communicator. He implements communication projects at PHB. Since he arrived at PHB, he has amplified our brand value by putting in place a set of tools and procedures for internal and external communications.
He has worked on many communications-related projects in Kathmandu, Nepal, for Chemonics International(USA) and WINROCK(USA) developing multimedia and visual communication materials related to their development projects in Nepal for USAID.
Sunil holds a Bachelor’s Degree from the Curtin University of Technology majoring Information systems. Sunil is a permanent resident of Singapore. He lives in two cities, Kathmandu and Singapore, to run his development centre and to serve his clients.
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Ruth Thiemele Kadjo
Ruth is a highly motivated Digital Financial Inclusion consultant. She joined PHB in September 2016 […]
Ruth is a highly motivated Digital Financial Inclusion consultant. She joined PHB in September 2016 but has been working on the microfinance sector since 2013.
She has been involved in digital finance workshops, digital credit scoring workshop, interoperability workshops throughout some west African countries. She has also conducted training in Benin and Senegal, aiming to give stakeholders a better understanding of what already exists in term of digital financial services and the applicable regulations. Apart from facilitating workshops, she has also participated in digital savings and credit product launch and writing for the series of toolkits for Financial Service Providers to go digital with UNCDF and the MasterCard Foundation.
Ruth started her career as the Coordinator Assistant for African Microfinance Transparency (AMT) in Dakar, a project of ADA Luxembourg. She later joined the MIX as Associate Analyst in charge of annual and quarterly financial and operating data collection and revision from Microfinance Institutions (Nigeria, Kenya, MENA, West Africa). Her experiences at AMT, at Microfinance Information Exchange (MIX) as an Associate analyst and the French NGO Positive Planet as Public Partnership Development Officer have allowed her to acquire a keen interest and skills in Financial Inclusion Projects development and Microfinance Institutions capacity building, with a strong focus on Africa.
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Andrew Tumwesigye
Andrew is an Agriculture Value Chains consultant with practical experience in all aspects. His areas […]
Andrew is an Agriculture Value Chains consultant with practical experience in all aspects. His areas of expertise are business development, financial planning training, conducting market research, ecosystem assessment, agent recruitment/placement, human-centred design, prototype iteration, advising clients on regulatory and compliance issues, supporting implementation partners to drive uptake and usage of digital payments as well as monitoring projects with direct engagement in agricultural value chains and rural communities.
He holds a Master of Business Administration (MBA) from the Multimedia marketing university in Malaysia and a Bachelor of Business Administration (BBA), Marketing from the Makerere University Business School in Uganda.
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Kristina Jervell
Kristina is a human-centred designer experienced in solving challenges in the developing context with an […]
Kristina is a human-centred designer experienced in solving challenges in the developing context with an aim to create social impact, placing people at the centre of the design process. Kristina believes that the people who live with various challenges in low and middle-income countries every day are the ones who hold the keys to the answers and solutions to the challenges they face - and as such have the capacity and potential to be innovators and sources of information to the design process to be observed and learned. Kristina aims to design with people and not for people, taking on the role of a facilitator of the creative process rather than an expert of the field(s) in question. Some examples of her work include:
Conducting 12 co-creation workshops with +120 participants and doing field research for MTN, with the aim to increase awareness and usage of MoKash, a mobile savings and credit product aimed to benefit the poor.
'Adjumani Design Challenge’; designing and facilitating a 3-month Human-Centred Design training program in collaboration with UNDP, for 30 refugees and host community youth in Adjumani, Northern Uganda.
Creating a game for GIZ (the German Development Agency) to be included in the secondary school curriculum to teach students financial literacy to strengthen their ability to plan, budget and save.
Collaborating with BTC (now Enabel) to Design a teaching toolkit (book, cards and poster) aimed at stimulating teachers in using learner-centred pedagogic skills to improve students learning.
From extensive experience abroad, Kristina speaks German, Spanish, English and Norwegian. She holds a Bachelors degree in Design from the Design Academy Eindhoven in The Netherlands, having graduated from the Man and Leisure Department, with focus on research, conceptual thinking and the ability to face a design problem with a holistic approach.
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Simon Priollaud
Simon Priollaud has ten years of experience in Digital Financial Services. He joined PHB as […]
Simon Priollaud has ten years of experience in Digital Financial Services. He joined PHB as an Associate Consultant in September 2017.
Simon spent four years in Africa on several Digital Financial Solutions linking Mobile Money and MFIs in Madagascar, Senegal, Ivory Coast and Morocco between 2009 to 2013. It is where he honed his pragmatic approach to building impactful solutions.
Simon supported Mobile Money Solutions that go the extra mile to serve low-income customers in Cameroon, Cambodia, Fiji, Vanuatu, Morocco, Yemen, Benin, and Zambia. He implemented agency banking solutions in Senegal, Madagascar, Rwanda and Zambia. He was also engaged in the implementation of Digital Financial services project in Uganda, Cameroon, Tanzania, Mali, Kenya, Ivory Coast, Djibouti, Comoros, Benin, Madagascar, and Togo. Over the last ten years, he also advised the Governments & Central Banks of Senegal, Mali, and Burkina Faso to link financial inclusion strategies with Digital Finance.
Recently Simon brought his expertise of Digital Savings and Credit to the next level initiatives in DRC, Mali, Madagascar, Nepal and Solomon Islands. One of his interests is to crunch numbers. He has analysed data of 15 business cases on Digital Finance in Africa and Asia.
Simon enjoys working on projects that create a positive impact on the beneficiaries and amplifies the value for partners. He has presented in conferences on Digital Finance in Senegal, Benin, Zimbabwe, Madagascar, and South Africa. Simon has trained regulators from 20 countries in Africa at the Mines Paris Tech ( ParisTech/Mastère BADGE). He communicates in English and French.
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Nassif Toukourou
Nassif has more than 15 years of experience in business development, training and project management […]
Nassif has more than 15 years of experience in business development, training and project management in digital finance. His industry experiences cut across banking, telecoms and consulting firms performing roles in agency banking, agent network management, transfer deployment, bulk payment, rural finance, and business development.
He has accumulated extensive work experience and local knowledge in Bénin, Kenya, Ivory Coast, Côte d'Ivoire, Kenya, Senegal, Togo and Senegal.
Nassif is an MBA graduate of finance and commerce. He speaks French, English and Yoruba languages.
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