Small Firms, Big Impact: Digitization, Financial Services, and Climate Resilience in Five Emerging Markets

Edoardo oversees CFI’s thought leadership in the thematic areas of financial consumer protection, responsible data practices, and green inclusive finance.

Prior to joining CFI, Edoardo worked for IFC’s venture capital team in Washington, D.C., where he promoted enabling environments and investment opportunities in embedded finance, startup ecosystems, and the digital economy. He also worked for the World Bank’s global financial inclusion unit, assisting regulators in leveraging data and developing strategies for financial inclusion and consumer protection. Between 2012 and 2018, Edoardo worked in Kenya as Research Economist for Financial Sector Deepening Kenya, a multi-donor program supporting the development of inclusive financial markets. He led flagship nationally representative surveys and provided fintech companies with advanced analytical tools for consumer insights and segmentation.

Edoardo holds a PhD in development economics from the University of Trento and an MSc in international development studies from the University of Amsterdam.

Paul Gubbins is an independent consultant providing support to organizations tackling development challenges with applied research and data analysis. Paul is currently focused on developing survey-based measures of financial health and using remote sensing data and geospatial approaches to support research in financial inclusion. Paul was a former research lead at FSD Kenya’s Center for Consumer Insights in Financial Inclusion and a poverty and inequality researcher at the World Bank in Kenya.

With over ten years of experience in research, Lucciana Alvarez Ruiz played a leading role in projects across CFI’s portfolio by providing project management, research design, and quantitative analysis. She was with CFI as a Research Manager from February 2021 to January 2025, and focused 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.

Anindita is an inclusive finance specialist with eleven years of experience undertaking research, ratings, client protection certifications, program implementation, training, and evaluation across multiple countries in Asia and Africa. She works closely with CFI’s Managing Director and leadership team on fundraising, operationalizing CFI’s strategy, internal knowledge management, and organizational processes.

Before joining CFI in October 2020, Anindita worked as an evidence and insights fellow at the UN Foundation’s Digital Impact Alliance (DIAL), where she helped develop a category management guide to enable developing country governments to strategically procure digital technologies. Anindita has worked for several financial inclusion organizations, including Dvara Finance, M-CRIL LLP, and Entrepreneurial Finance Lab (now LenddoEFL). While working as the partner success manager at Entrepreneurial Finance Lab, she helped financial institutions in India and Nepal adopt psychometric credit scoring to safely accelerate lending to low-income households and enterprises.

Anindita graduated from Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA) with an MPA in economic and political development. She also holds a post-graduate degree in management from the Institute of Rural Management Anand (IRMA) and an undergraduate degree in information technology from the Institute of Engineering and Management (IEM). Anindita is fluent in English, Bengali, and Hindi.

Elizabeth (Liz) McGuinness is a financial inclusion professional with over twenty years of experience in inclusive finance, financial capabilities, women’s economic empowerment, agricultural development, and SME development. As the former senior director of Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning (MEL), she aimed to develop and support sound monitoring and evaluation approaches at CFI.

Liz has designed, led, and managed research to support strategy development, product development, learning, results measurement, and program, outcomes, and impact evaluation. Liz has led program evaluations of financial inclusion programs, such as agricultural finance and women’s financial inclusion projects; qualitative field research to assess the risk management strategies of low-income people, to support financial product development; and desk research on the economic resilience of poor people, particularly women.

She has designed M&E systems and provided capacity building and technical assistance in M&E, including in complexity-aware methods. She led a participative process at CFI to develop a theory of change for the new strategy, and she has advised the World Bank on indicators to track and assess the impact of an SME lending program on women in Nigeria. With strong skills in program and project management, Liz has trained and led research teams in countries across Central Asia, Latin America/Caribbean, the Middle East/North Africa, sub-Saharan Africa, and South and Southeast Asia.

Liz has also worked as an independent consultant. She previously worked for Microfinance Opportunities, Save the Children, and ACDI/VOCA. She holds a B.A. from McGill University and an M.A. in economics from New York University. She has lived and worked in Zimbabwe and Tajikistan.

Colin joins CFI as a research specialist with a background in project design, monitoring and evaluation, and social performance management. He supports research projects as well as the implementation of data collection, management, review, and presentation; drafting blog posts and reports; planning events and workshops, among other things.

Colin previously worked as the social performance manager at Small Enterprise Foundation, the largest MFI in South Africa, where he led a team responsible for gathering and analyzing insights on client progress, satisfaction, and challenges. He also reviewed and developed the organization’s social performance practices, in addition to working on the design, monitoring, and evaluation of financial education and savings projects.

Prior to that, Colin spent time developing M&E tools for BancoSol in Bolivia, consulted with nonprofits and family philanthropic foundations in the DC area to strengthen internal operations, and was an intern on the Bankers without Borders team at Grameen Foundation.

Colin has a master’s degree in social enterprise from American University: School of International Service and a bachelor’s degree in anthropology from Sewanee.