FS Staff and Consultants
Each member of MEDA’s Financial Services team has extensive experience in various areas of the industry.
Staff at Headquarters
Julie Redfern
Vice President, Financial Services
Julie Redfern is a senior microfinance specialist with over 18 years of international experience in providing managerial and technical expertise to start up, mature and formalize MFIs around the world. Julie has been with MEDA since 1996 and has led the Financial Services team since 2003. She leads a team of 10 staff and associates in both North America and abroad, and has provided project management and consulting services to over 16 clients in 40 countries. She serves as a director on the Boards of two Microfinance Institutions: MiCredito (Nicaragua), and Sevis Finansye Fonkoze (Haiti) and previously served on the board of Microvest, a private investment fund for MFIs. Prior to joining MEDA, Julie was a project manager for the SEEP Network, supporting the scale up of microenterprise programs. From 1991-1995 she managed CARE International’s Rural Enterprise Promotion Project in Lesotho, and served in the Peace Corps (Lesotho) as a small business advisor. Julie has also previously managed a branch of the Tucson Federal Credit Union in Tucson, Arizona for five years. She holds a Masters in Business Administration, Bachelor of Arts in Economics and two advanced certificates in Credit Union Management.
Ruth Faust Jacobs
Director, Deposit Mobilization
Since 2005, Ruth has provided oversight and technical assistance to a variety of microfinance and financial institutions in Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Pakistan, and Indonesia in deposit mobilization and risk management implementation analysis and planning, regulatory transformation, and microfinance management. She developed MEDA's deposit mobilization and risk management methodology and has presented this methodology to various organizations and investors. Prior to joining MEDA, Ruth's previous experience covers nearly 25 years of bank management responsibilities for oversight of bank retail branch management, MIS operations and alternative delivery mechanisms, human resources, regulatory compliance and reporting, credit and deposit operations, risk management, training, marketing, and governance. As a senior manager, she coordinated and participated in bank strategic planning and business development, and worked on bank industry issues such as IT vendor bank information processing and management software solutions, integration and installation of 3rd party vendor solutions providing new retail delivery mechanisms such as Internet Banking, ATM, debit card, mobile phone banking, and organized and presides over IT vendor bank software solutions' bank user groups.
Jennifer Denomy
Director, Youth and Financial Services
Jennifer Denomy has worked in education and international development for 16 years. She joined MEDA Waterloo in 2006 where she focuses on youth, education and microfinance. Jennifer is responsible for youth and workforce development projects in Egypt, Morocco and Afghanistan, supporting microfinance partners in developing non-formal education, workplace safety initiatives and entrepreneurial training for working youth. She also facilitates the SEEP Youth Financial Services Practitioner Learning Program. Jennifer brings experience in training and group facilitation, curriculum design and testing and qualitative research methodology. Prior to joining MEDA, Jennifer worked as the pedagogical manager of a training centre in Germany. She also developed and field tested a set of textbooks for BRAC’s Non-formal Primary Education Program in Bangladesh. Jennifer holds a M.Ed. in Comparative, International and Development Education with a focus on curriculum design from the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at the University of Toronto (OISE/UT) and a M.A. from McGill University.
Nicole Pasricha
Director, Inclusive Rural Finance
Nicole Pasricha, of Toronto, Canada is the Director of Inclusive Rural Finance in MEDA's Financial Services Department, leading MEDA's programming in rural, agricultural, and value chain financing. Since joining MEDA in 2007, Nicole has overseen and delivered technical support to a variety of microfinance and agriculture value chain projects and MFI partners in Afghanistan, Nicaragua, Zambia, Ethiopia, Mozambique, Tajikistan, Ukraine, and Vietnam. She is a faculty member of the Boulder Microfinance Institute in Turin and Costa Rica, offering a course on "Agriculture Value Chain Financing for MFIs". Prior to joining MEDA, Nicole worked on microfinance industry issues such as technology and microfinance credit ratings at the Consultative Group to Assist the Poor (CGAP) in Washington, D.C., and supervised urban and rural credit operations as a credit supervisor at Banco ProCredit in El Salvador. Nicole holds an M.A. in International Affairs from the George Washington University and Bachelors' in Political Science and Business Administration from the University of Florida.
Kamran Abdullayev
Senior Consultant/Project Manager, Inclusive Rural Finance
Kamran Abdullayev, of Kitchener, Canada is a Senior Consultant / Project Manager in the Financial Services Department, specializing in the areas of rural, agriculture, and value chain financing. Kamran has over 14 years of experience in enterprise development, microfinance, and value chains, including in direct microenterprise service provision, market assessment, and in designing, managing and technical backstopping to economic development-focused field programs. Prior to joining MEDA in 2010, Kamran oversaw microfinance operations as COO of FINCA International in Azerbaijan. While at Mercy Corps Azerbaijan he also contributed to strategy design and implementation for a variety of programs in the Caucasus, Central Asia, Africa and South Asia, and gained experience in the needs of refugees and displaced persons. Kamran holds a Master's Degree in Development Economics from the University of East Anglia (UK) and an Engineering Degree from the Azerbaijan Civil Engineering University. He is a member of the UK Development Studies Association, and is fluent in English, Russian, and Azerbaijan.
Sashi Selvendran
Senior Consultant/Project Manager, Deposit MobilizationSashi Selvendran has ten years of experience in microfinance, credit guarantees, risk analysis, training, and project management. At MEDA, Sashi is responsible for managing grants and providing technical assistance to MFIs in the process of transformation and deposit taking product development. Prior to MEDA, Sashi worked at USAID in their Office of Development Credit and Office of Poverty Reduction in Washington, DC. She specialized in technical assistance to 15 USAID Missions with credit guarantees in SME finance, housing microfinance, and municipal finance. Sashi has worked on savings mobilization and investment at the Consultative Group to Assist the Poor (CGAP), project management at Grameen Foundation, and microfinance delivery channels in water and sanitation in Cambodia. As a consultant for the ADB, Sashi conducted due diligence of prospective partner banks in Central Asia and Asia. She obtained her MSc. in Local Economic Development from the London School of Economics and her BA in International Development from Vanderbilt University.
Chrissy Martin
Senior Consultant/Project Manager, Inclusive Rural Finance
Chrissy Martin has recently joined MEDA as a Project Manager/ Senior Consultant in the Financial Services department. Chrissy has several years of experience in technology solutions for development and a specialty in mobile and branchless banking. Before MEDA, Chrissy was based in Haiti, working as the Product Manager for Mobile Financial Services at Digicel, the first carrier to launch a mobile money product in the country. Chrissy has a BA in Foreign Affairs from the University of Virginia and an MA from The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, specialized in International Business and NGO Management. Her work at MEDA focuses on using technology to expand rural access to a range of financial services in countries including Zambia, Haiti, and Nicaragua.
Jennifer Gurbin Harley
Consultant/Project Leader, Youth and Financial Services
Jennifer has five years of experience in market research, proposal development, drafting and editing technical documents, and delivering short-term consulting services. She has managed product development processes with partner financial institutions in Nepal and Morocco, and undertaken market research initiatives in both West Bank/Gaza and Pakistan. She also facilitates the working group for youth and financial services with the SEEP Network in North America. From 2007-2008 she undertook a one-year research study to analyze the marketing strategies of four non-governmental organizations in Canada. She holds a Masters degree in International Development from the University of Ottawa. Jennifer is fluent in English and has working knowledge of French.
Rachel Yordy
Project Coordinator/Junior Consultant
Rachel has six years of experience in quantitative and qualitative research, a background in training and managing research teams as well as project monitoring and evaluation skills from consulting and project work in Afghanistan, Haiti, Egypt, Uganda, Ghana and Sri Lanka. As a Child Rights Research Associate for a MEDA project in Egypt, Rachel previously worked with MFIs in Cairo, Qena and Aswan to develop social interventions for business owners and their young employees. Rachel holds an MA in African Peace Studies from the University of Bradford in the UK and BA in International Development from Trent University in Canada. She is fluent in English and has a working knowledge of French, and basic conversational skills in Egyptian Arabic.
Sa-Eun Park
Project Coordinator/Junior Consultant
Sa-Eun has several years of experience in retail banking and wealth management at Bank of America. Before starting at MEDA, she managed a portfolio of $115 million of high net-worth clients and received national recognition for her performance. Sa-Eun has also held small business development management positions in a console game company in Southern California and a medical import-export business in Saudi Arabia.
Sa-Eun obtained a BS from Haas School of Business at University of California-Berkeley and an MS in Development Management from the American University, with a focus in microfinance and accounting. Her recent master’s research includes optimizing the operational efficiency of an MFI in Brazzaville, the Republic of Congo.International Staff
Adil Sadoq
Field Project Manager, Egypt/Morocco
Adil is the Field Project Manager for YouthInvest, a five year, multi-country project providing youth with access to financial and non-financial services. Duties include providing technical expertise to local partners on developing and assessing youth oriented products, including training, credit and savings as well as forming and maintaining partnerships with microfinance institutions, training providers and a range of public, private and not-for-profit stakeholders. In addition, he is a certified social auditor and seasoned microfinance practitioner. Since 2002, he has been sharing his expertise as a consultant with a range of microfinance institutions, donors and microfinance network organizations throughout Africa and the Middle East. Adil has significant experience as team leader designing and launching microfinance programs, including developing a branch network, designing, pilot-testing and rolling out new products, man resource strategy development and performance indicator monitoring. Adil is a solid trainer who has been providing training in numerous microfinance training modules. He holds an MA in French Literature, University of Fes, Morocco and is fluent in English, French and Arabic.