Raphael Akomeah
Low-fee Private Schools Expert
Raphael Akomeah has been working with low-cost private schools for over nine years, managing Sinapi Aba Trust’s low-cost school finance program and serving as CapPlus’ education finance consultant and IDP Foundation’s projects manager in Ghana. He implemented the IDP Rising Schools program in 18 Sinapi Aba branches, managing a loan portfolio of 398 loans totaling $1.2 million that maintained a 92% repayment rate. He also created a loan database for decision-making and reporting. Mr. Akomeah worked closely with school proprietors, delivering extensive school management training to more than 600 school entrepreneurs that covered financial management skills, business planning, operational best practices, and teacher training on child-centered instructions.
Sumit Bagchi
Development Finance IT Specialist
Sumit Bagchi has worked with CapPlus over the past decade to deliver information technology solutions to our clients and other development organizations, including embedding impact measurement into financial institutions’ MIS. His 18 years’ experience in the financial sector gives him a strategic understanding of technology and its application and delivery for achieving overall business objectives. Mr. Bagchi designs and implements IT systems ranging from simple to complex, transitions organizations to digital operations, and develops IT strategies and manages their implementation. Financial institution clients include microfinance institutions, banks, and leasing companies in Africa, India, East Asia and the Pacific.
Dr. Joanna Härmä
Senior Advisor
Dr. Joanna Härmä has researched low-fee private schooling for the poor in sub-Saharan Africa and India since 2004 and leads CapPlus’ education markets research across Africa, as well as serving as an advisor to the EMII team. She is an Honorary Fellow at the Centre of African Studies, University of Edinburgh, and Visiting Research Fellow at the Centre for International Education, University of Sussex. Dr. Härmä’s work is published in the Oxford Review of Education, the International Journal of Educational Development, and the Handbook of International Development and Education, among other academic journals and edited volumes. She has designed and conducted studies for DfID, developed reports for UNESCO, and served as a Visiting Scholar at Columbia University.
Roger Keighley
Senior Banker
Roger Keighley is a key member of CapPlus’ Education Markets Impact Initiative, where he is responsible for sourcing deals, conducting due diligence, structuring transactions and implementing/ managing capacity building. He has over 30 years’ experience in SME finance, corporate, and investment banking, and was previously Norfund’s Investment Director, Financial Institutions, where he identified equity and debt investment opportunities in financial institutions and conducted due diligence on potential investees. Mr. Keighley has strengthened SME finance at multiple financial institutions, primarily in Africa. In his various investment capacities he has monitored the implementation of transactions, managed investment portfolios and advised an international banking consortium bidding to purchase a microfinance bank through privatization. He has held bank and insurance company directorships in Lesotho, Botswana, Zimbabwe and Tanzania and serves as chair of a bank board’s risk committee.
Mary Miller
Senior Banker
Ms. Miller is a commercial banker and financial consultant with over 30 years of banking and international development experience. She has conducted SME diagnostics, developed market segmentation strategies, SME banking strategies, created financial products and cross-selling strategies, revised operating procedures, and developed case studies, including on affordable private primary school finance models. She also applies her expertise to value chains, developing new sources of credit, structuring appropriate financial instruments and procedures, identifying alternative collateral and increasing access to finance for SMEs, agricultural producers and agribusinesses. She has extensive experience in designing, using, and evaluating credit enhancements, as well as host government, provincial, and donor guarantee programs. Additionally she is an experienced training developer.
Steve Orlesky
Senior Banker
Mr. Orlesky is a seasoned micro- and SME banker with over 30 years’ global experience both as a banker and consultant, including his role as CEO of two European banks over a six year period. His in-depth experience as a “bank operator” makes him well qualified to advise bank partners on many aspects of their operations. Recently, Mr. Orlesky has been actively involved in consulting financial institutions in sub-Saharan Africa on various aspects of banking, including lending policies, processes and workflows and appropriate corporate governance structures.
Ian Paddick
Senior Banker
Ian Paddick is an SME credit specialist with over 30 years of experience in commercial banking, half of it in Africa. He is an expert in credit risk analysis, credit process review and re-engineering and portfolio management. He is also an accredited trainer and skills coach. Previously, he served as Credit Director and in other senior credit positions for Barclays Africa in Botswana, Ghana, Mozambique, South Africa and Uganda. His responsibilities included portfolio management and monitoring, building lenders’ credit capability through training and coaching, designing early warning procedures and re-engineering credit processes. He has served on various country executive and credit committees. Prior to his credit responsibilities, he worked as Head of Local Business and as Corporate Relationship Manager for Barclays in the UK, among other banking roles.
Funmi Sodipo
Senior Banker
Ms.Sodipo is a banking professional with 28 years’ experience spanning a broad range of financial sector roles, accrued in a successful career in retail, microfinance and SME banking, and international development consulting. She applies her small business banking experience in conducting CapPlus’ Small Business Banking Diagnostics and contributing to implementation teams for MSME and affordable education initiatives. Her in-depth knowledge of relationship management, marketing financial products, and a diversity of banking principles and practices are shared with CapPlus’ clients. She is an MBA from the Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Nigeria, and an MSc in Finance and Management from Cranfield University in the UK.
Frances Toomey-Mys
Senior Advisor
Ms. Toomey-Mys is a development finance expert with over 25 years’ experience building and growing financial institutions’ financial and business development services to micro, small and medium-sized enterprises.
Risk management, product development, market analysis, program design, fund management and institutional assessments are some of Ms. Toomey-Mys’ key areas of expertise. In addition, she established and managed a women entrepreneurship development program in Ethiopia, assessed and prepared human resource policies, procedures and guideline manuals for a microfinance bank in Papua New Guinea and transformed microfinance institutions into for profit operations. She has created SME, commercial, agriculture and rural lending units, established microfinance institutions, and provided a wide variety of capacity building within financial institutions in Africa and the Middle East, South and Central Asia, the South Pacific and Eastern Europe. Her experience includes implementing projects funded by DFID, the WorldBank/IFC, USAID, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
ftoomey-mys@capplus.org
Sandy Vaci
Senior Banker
Mr. Vaci has a 35-year international career with experience in 50+ countries across four continents. He is an expert in customer relationship management, executive management, business development, marketing and sales. He has built eleven SME/retail banks in Eastern Europe and the Commonwealth of Independent States and is former Director of CRM for 26 EMEA countries at Citibank. He has served in senior management positions to CEO / Board Chairman level, and is an internationally recognized presenter, author, trainer and MBA lecturer.
www.sandyvaci.com
Terry Wyer
Senior Banker
Mr. Wyer is a results oriented professional with over 20 years of global experience in leadership and consulting roles in banking and development finance. He is a strategic leader that approaches problem solving with a hands-on, entrepreneurial attitude that delivers results that are effective and profitable. He has successfully built and run impact development funds in Sub-Saharan Africa and has designed and implemented bank development programs for IFC in Africa and Asia. Mr. Wyer has experience working and living in North America, Europe, Asia, Africa and Russia and has the proven ability to diplomatically and effectively work across various sectors with all levels of international/local business leaders and governments.
