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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 

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

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.

Bezawit Hailegiorgis

Finbit Interim Manager

Bezawit Hailegiorgis is working as a Finbit Interim Manager in L-IFT. She holds a Masters degree in International Relations. She is experienced in Global and African Political Economy, International Relations, Political Affairs and Foreign Policy. She is interested in Social Enterprise, Financial Technology, Communication, Research, Saving Groups Technology, Economic & Financial Inclusion, Social Entrepreneurship, and Economic Empowerment


 

Minh Dao 

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. 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.

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

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.