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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 

Programme 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

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 Dao 

Video Maker

Minh Deo has been working as a video maker 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. Read More>>

    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. Read More>>

    Before coming to L-IFT she was a Marketing Executive in Export/Import of Golden Land Express Company.

Mekdes

Mekdes Hailegiorgis

Programme Manager

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. Read More>>

    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 Officer

Frehiwot Sinishaw has a Master’s degree in Public International Law at Addis Ababa University Law school, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. She is responsible for recruitment, coaching and monitoring field researchers and supervisors. She assists in giving training to field researchers, report writing, proposal writing and data processing. She is also the communication staff in which she manages social media and website activities, in addition to document organization.

 

Fireayehu Zekarias

Software Engineer

Fireayehu Zekaris is a graduating ambitious problem-solving software engineer studying at Addis Ababa institute of Technology, currently working at L-IFT as a Front End Engineer. He has a ReactJS Nanodegree Certificate from Google Udacity and  highly experienced with JavaScript/Typescript language and related frameworks. He is goal-oriented and  eager to work with personnel in all areas of work to help boost profits and improve opportunities.

 

Michael Asnake

Android Developer

Michael Asnake has a Bachelor’s degree in Information Technology from Addis Ababa institute of Technology. He’s part of the Android development team based in Ethiopia. He has over 2 years of experience in Android and web development as a part-time developer, in freelance and as an intern. Currently, as a member of the team, he’s involved in the active development and maintenance of the android application.

 

 

Biruk Tsegaye

Android Developer

Biruk Tsegaye has a Bachelor’s degree in software engineering from Addis Ababa University with experience and extensive education in software Design and Application Development. He is responsible for implementing, and enhancing Finbit  Android mobile application alongside a cross-functional teams. He also have experience on web development and graphics design.
 

 

Aschalew Worku

Project Manager

Aschalew Worku is working as a project manager in L-IFT. He has studied Economics and MBA. He has more than a decade of experience in conducting different types of research works in various sectors, i.e. social media, marketing, and economics. He is experienced in managing surveys, coordinating field activities, delivering training, data analysis, managing data, and report writing.
 

 

Mhlalisi Ncube

Project Manager

Mhlalisi Ncube is responsible for the coordination of the Corner Shop Diaries project. He was born and grew up in Zimbabwe where he still lives and works from. He has experience working on projects focused on research, rural and urban livelihoods strengthening, improving access to education, peace-building, and environmental conservation having worked with various development organisations in Zimbabwe and the United States of America. Mhlalisi studied Sociology and Anthropology at Manhattanville College in New York, USA.
 

 

Behailu Getachew

Project Manager

Behailu Getachew is a Project Manager at L-IFT in charge of recruitment, managing, reporting, training and monitoring project implementation. He has B.Sc. in Applied Statistics and MBA (Masters of Business Administration). He worked as Project Manager on more than 10 Projects in Ethiopia where his overall role included leading qualitative and quantitative research; Manage overall data collection both in the lab and on the field; Responsible for training data collection team, creating and monitoring protocol, Read More>>
    budget management, tracking data collection progress and ensuring data quality. He lived experience in the area of Business Analysis, Monitoring and Evaluation, Data Analysis and Research Data Supervision in different governmental and non-governmental organizations.
     
     

    Cosmas Biwott

    Data Expert

    Cosmas Biwott is currently working for L-IFT as a data expert. He has a degree in Applied Statistics With Computing from Moi University. Currently undertaking master’s degree at the University of Nairobi. He is innovative and motivated, hardworking and goal oriented with great team ethics, excellent communication skills and interpersonal skills. Ability to work independently under pressure with good clarity of thoughts and organizational skills. Read More>>
      He has worked as a graduate statistician, logistics officer and voter registration assistant. He has good skills and knowledge in data management, mathematical and statistical modeling and he can perform data analysis and visualizations in R and SPSS, MS Excel and STATA.
       
      Adonay Negash

      Communications Officer 

      Adonay is the Communications Officer at L-IFT, responsible for developing and implementing effective multi-channel communication in the organization. Adonay has experience in content creation while working for other social enterprises.
       
      Fanuel Sisay 

      Data Integrity Officer 

      Fanuel Sisay is a Data Integrity Officer at L-IFT in charge of routinely going through each data point to signal errors and inconsistencies then work closely and follow up with the Project managers to provide correct data. He has B.Sc. in Information Technology and Scientific Computing. He also has experience in testing the FINBIT application.

       

      Joshua Byenkya

      Senior Research Manager

      Joshua is Senior Research Manager at L-IFT leading the Solar Adoption RCT In Nakivale and Kiryandongo refugee settlements, in Uganda. He has 11 years of experience in managing research and evaluation studies in Uganda and South Sudan in various development domains. He has conducted 11 project/programme evaluations, and 12 research studies commissioned by ActionAid Uganda, Reproductive Health Uganda (RHU), USAID/RTI, Compassion International, Dan Church Aid (DCA) in South Sudan, CIVICUS, HelpAge International, Uganda Reach the Aged Association (URAA), Read More>>

        Makerere University Department of Population Studies, Centre for Health Human Rights and Development (CEHURD), The Social Innovation Academy (SINA), Action Against Hunger ACF USA-Uganda Mission, Restless Development among others. He is a graduate from the Institute of Development Policy (IOB), University of Antwerp, Belgium with an Advanced Masters in Development Evaluation and Management. Currently, he is also a long distance Commonwealth Scholar pursuing an MSc. in Global Ageing and Policy from the University of Southampton, UK.