Anne Marie van Swinderen
Founder and Managing Director
Anne Marie van Swinderen is the founder of L-IFT BV. She has been active in financial inclusion for over 30 years. She brings along experience in numerous projects: agricultural and cooperative finance in Zambia, microfinance outreach in Bolivia, financial diaries in Colombia, studies about demand for mobile financial services, product development for mobile financial services in Ethiopia and youth financial diaries in Togo and Ethiopia.
Jose Vahl
Country Director L-IFT Myanmar
Jose Vahl is currently directing L-IFT’s business growth in Myanmar from 1 project with 800 respondents and 40 researchers in 4 geographical areas to a country wide program. She has been more than 6 years in Myanmar now, arrived as country director for an INGO, and continued with consulting in numerous projects. She brings along years of experience in Local Economic Development and Business Development, Value Chain Analyses and Women Economic Empowerment and a Masters in Agriculture from Wageningen University in The Netherlands.
Marcienne Umubyeyi
Programme Manager
Marcienne Umubyeyi is L-IFT Programme Manager and was engaged as a coordinator of the Livelihood Diaries in Ghana and Uganda. She has 14 years’ experience in financial inclusion and entrepreneurship, youth training, project formulation and implementation.
Mahlet Alemayehu
Project Manager
Mahlet Alemayehu is a Programme Manager at L-IFT in charge of reporting, administration and data analysis. She has been with L-IFT since inception and has 8 years’ work experience in survey implementation and field work supervision. She is expert in data processing for financial diaries and data interpretation. She has a background in Economics and Human Resource (BSc and MSc). She has supervised five major high frequency studies (Ethiopia, 3 in Uganda, Nigeria).
Haimanot Yibeltal
Technology Manager
Haimanot Yibeltal has studied Mathematics and Physics at Manhattanville College in New York and has experience in CAPI software for financial diaries research, video making, technology management and data base design. He is particularly experienced in quality management through technology. He is the Technology Manager at L-IFT in charged of data management, technology and logic responsibilities.
Minh Deo
Video Maker
Minh Deo has been working as a videomaker for L-IFT since 2015. She holds a master’s degree in modern languages and discovered her passion for content creation while travelling the world.
Andrew Magunda
Country Manager – L-IFT Uganda
Andrew Magunda is a researcher, monitoring and evaluation specialist with 14 years of experience in financial literacy programming and evaluation in East, Central and West Africa, mainly working on youth financial education and products, and adult rural saving initiatives. He is a Country Manager with L-IFT in Uganda and has worked on SEEP’s evaluation of the long-term performance and evolution of savings groups in Uganda and Mali and the Refugee Financial Diaries research project in Uganda. He has led over 15 savings evaluations and has served on evaluation committees for Global Youth Economic Opportunities Conference (USA) Aflatoun International (Holland).
Theresa Thin
Programme Officer
Theresa Thin is L-IFT’s Programme Officer in Myanmar. She is responsible for recruitment, training, coaching and supervising the field supervisors and promoters / data volunteers for the different L-IFT Myanmar projects. She liaises with the clients on logistics and is an expert in working with the different software tools (including our own Finbit App) that L-IFT uses. She holds a Bachelor of Science in Mathematics of Dagon University and a Diploma in Business Management from De La Salle of St. Benedict College. Before coming to L-IFT she was a Marketing Executive in Export/Import of Golden Land Express Company.
Eric Anjeo
Data Analyst
Eric Anjeo is L-IFT’s Data Analyst/statistician skilled in recording, interpreting and analyzing data in a fast-paced environment, advanced proficiency in all aspects of data analytics (data mining, data visualization, predictive modeling, machine learning, and time series analysis in Python and R). He is responsible for supporting research analysis and development processes. He has a bachelor degree in statistics from the University of Nairobi (UON).
Mekdes Hailegiorgis
Programme Assistant
Mekdes Hailegiorgis has an MSC in Business Economics. She has been engaged as project management officer in charge of administrative tasks such as field supervision, reviewing financial reporting, assist on methodology implementation and data analysis.
John Kamau
Data Expert
John Kamau is currently working for L-IFT as a data expert. He has a degree in Economics from the University of Nairobi. He also has a certificate in CPA 2 and for Data science in R and Python. He has over 5 years’ experience in Data: as an operations analyst in a transport Sacco, a market data analyst, an innovation analyst as well as a data scientist in the financial sector. He is experienced in Machine learning in both R and Python as well as SQL and big data analysis in Spark. He can perform data analysis and visualizations in R and Python and create dashboards in R and Tableau. He is experienced in web development and creation of data related applications in Flask and Django.
Selamawit Alemayehu
Accountant and Office Assistant
Selamawit Alemayehu has a Bachelor’s degree in accounting and finance at Addis Ababa University. She has 3 years’ experience in accounting and administrative works. She is L-IFT’s accountant and office assistant based in Ethiopia. She is in charge of coordinating the central finance system for the organization. She also assists in administrative tasks related to the organization and communication.
Frehiwot Sinishaw
Programme Assistant
Frehiwot Sinishaw has a Master’s degree in Public International Law at Addis Ababa University Law school, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. She assists in report and proposal writing, data processing and field supervision. She also manages social media and website activities, and document organizations.