Green Inclusive Finance in Action: Learnings from Guatemala

With over ten years of experience in research, Lucciana Alvarez Ruiz plays a leading role in projects across CFI’s portfolio by providing project management, research design, and quantitative analysis. She joined the CFI as a Research Manager in February 2021 and focuses on micro and small enterprises, climate finance, AI, and women’s financial inclusion.

Lucciana graduated from Harvard Kennedy School of Government with a master’s in public administration in international development. Additionally, Lucciana holds a bachelor’s degree in economics from the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú and master’s studies in economics from the same university.

Before joining the CFI, Lucciana worked as a consultant at the Inter-American Development Bank in Washington DC and Peru for over four years, researching and managing loans and operations in Latin American countries. She also worked for the United Nations Development Programme, the Bloomberg Harvard City Leadership Initiative, the Social Policy Data Visualization Lab of Harvard Kennedy School, and other think tanks.

She has experience designing and managing projects, supervising the implementation of surveys, analyzing data using STATA and RStudio language programs, writing academic papers, and visualizing data. She is fluent in English and Spanish and intermediate in Portuguese.

Rafe Mazer is a leading global voice on consumer protection and competition policy in digital financial services and the digital economy. For 15 years, Rafe has brought the consumer’s perspective to product design and policymaking with governments and financial service providers in countries across Africa, Asia, and Latin America. As the first Director of IPA’s Consumer Protection Research Initiative from 2019-2022, Rafe developed a portfolio of more than 20 consumer protection research projects addressing digital consumer credit, pricing transparency, fraud in digital app stores, and other emerging risks in digital economies. Prior to his time at IPA, Rafe was the director of a Kenyan consulting firm specializing in consumer protection policy, and before that led CGAP’s work on consumer protection and behavioral research for 7+ years.

A talented researcher and writer, Rafe has designed and executed field research including surveys, mystery shopping, behavioral experiments, and randomized impact evaluations, as well as policy analysis and regulatory reforms. Rafe’s current work includes supporting the expansion of open finance models in emerging markets and the development of continental competition policy for digital markets in Africa. Rafe is currently Director of Fair Finance Consulting, which provides consumer protection and competition policy expertise to a wide range of clients and partners globally.