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Board of Directors

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Paul Maritz, Chair

For the past several years, Paul has shared his management and technology expertise as a volunteer member of the Grameen Technology Center’s Advisory Council. His career includes 14 years at Microsoft Corporation where he was a member of the executive management team and was responsible for the company's software business, including the development and marketing of Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Office. Prior to that, he spent five years at Intel Corporation.

Born and raised in Zimbabwe, Paul attended the Universities of Cape Town and Natal in South Africa. He enjoys spending time in Africa where he sponsors projects in education and rural development in the country of Zambia.

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Robert Eichfeld, Vice-Chair

During a 33 year career with Citigroup, Bob managed many of Citibank’s business, country and regional activities while posted in Puerto Rico and elsewhere in the Caribbean, followed by Indonesia, Pakistan, Brazil, Saudi Arabia, New Zealand, India and again in Saudi Arabia.

Since 2000, he has continued to use the business and cultural awareness skills that arise from having lived in or traveled to over 100 countries. He advised a de-novo venture capital fund in Dubai. He helped set up a new Islamic bank in Bahrain along with a group of investors. He recently joined the Board of the leading investment bank in the Middle East, Cairo-based EFG-Hermes, where he chairs the Bank’s Audit Committee. EFG specializes in brokerage and research, private equity and corporate finance across the Arab world.

He is currently a member of the Global Advisory Council at his alma mater, the Thunderbird School of International Management and serves on its global degrees committee. In addition, he has joined the Board of the Pearl S. Buck Foundation, an organization dedicated to childhood welfare throughout Asia. He also remains active in Rotary, particularly with Rotary’s international microfinance and other social development programs. Bob’s other interests include international current affairs, tennis, hiking, rafting, extensive travel.

He graduated from Wake Forest University in 1966 with an undergraduate degree in Economics, from Thunderbird in 1967 with a graduate degree in International Business Management, and from Harvard’s Executive Program for Management Development in 1985.

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Rosanna Ramos-Velita

Rosanna Ramos-Velita has over twenty years of experience in international finance and technology development. She has held leadership positions in global consumer banking, Latin America investment banking and microelectronics design and business development. As a Senior Executive at Citigroup, she was CFO of Global Marketing and Director of Strategic Initiatives for the Global Consumer Group, Citigroup’s largest business worldwide. As Investment Banker at Bankers Trust and UBS, she lead and participated in key Latin American M&A and Capital Market transactions such as the IPO of Unibanco in Brazil and the Privatization of Venezuela's telecommunications company. Previously, she also held senior engineering positions at AT&T Microelectronics. During the past five years, she has been involved and actively participated in Microfinance. She is currently a Member of the Board of Directors and Chair of the Latin American and Caribbean Advisory Council of Grameen Foundation.

Most recently, she was invited to join and currently serves as a Member of The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation’s Global Health Innovative Financing Advisory Group. Rosanna Ramos-Velita holds an MBA from the Wharton School, an MA in International Business from The Joseph H. Lauder Institute of the University of Pennsylvania, an MS in Electrical Engineering from Lehigh University and a BS in Electrical Engineering from the University of North Dakota. She was undergraduate fellow of the Institute of International Education.

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Robert Ottenhoff, Secretary

Robert G. Ottenhoff is the President of GuideStar, which operates the largest database of financial information on nonprofit organizations and foundations. From 2000-2002, he started high tech companies for Linsang Partners and operated his own international management consulting practice. He has more than 25 years of experience in broadcast management and strategic leadership. From 1991 to 1999, he was Chief Operating Officer of the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS). While at PBS, Mr. Ottenhoff was Chairman of the Board of PBS Enterprises and President of NABA, an organization representing broadcasters and other telecommunication companies in the US, Canada and Mexico.

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Nurjahan Begum

Nurjahan Begum was one of the earliest associates of Professor Muhammad Yunus when he founded Grameen Bank. A student at Chittagong University, Ms. Nurjahan organized poor rural women for Grameen Bank’s grassroots groups during the bank’s earliest and most challenging days.

She worked as the General Manager, Training & International Program of Grameen Bank for more than a decade and also served as the Principal of Grameen Bank’s Central Training Institute.  Ms. Nurjahan is also a consultant, trainer and evaluator of microcredit programs around the world.

Ms. Nurjahan is currently the managing director of Grameen Shikkha, part of the Grameen family of companies. Grameen Shikkha is a non-profit education organization, providing scholarship support to poor students in Bangladesh.

She serves as a director for various Grameen Family companies: Grameen Trust, Grameen Shakti, Grameen Kalyan, Grameen Uddog, Grameen Krishi Foundation, Grameen Fisheries and Livestock Foundation, Grameen Capital Management Ltd. and Grameen Employment Services Ltd. Ms. Nurjahan sits on the board of the Center for Mass Education in Science (CMES), a leading NGO in Bangladesh working in human resource development. 

Ms. Nurjahan was awarded Grameen Foundation’s 2008 Susan M. Davis Lifetime Achievement Award and the 2009 World Summit Millennium Development Goals Award.

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Susan Davis

Ms. Davis is a founding Board member of the Grameen Foundation and Chair Emeritus. She is currently the President & CEO of BRAC USA, a new venture she helped to create to support BRAC's global expansion to Africa and other parts of Asia. She also leads Ashoka's Global Academy for Social Entrepreneurship, and formerly oversaw their expansion to the Middle East and Central Asia and serves on the international board committee that selects Ashoka Fellows. She is a senior advisor to New York University's Reynolds Program for Social Entrepreneurship. Previously, she was a Senior Advisor to the Director General of the International Labor Organization. Prior to that, she led the global advocacy group, Women's Environment & Development Organization. She has extensive microcredit experience from her years with the Ford Foundation in Bangladesh and from her work with Women's World Banking. Prior to that she was the Assistant Director of the export trading company of the Port Authority of New York & New Jersey. In addition to Grameen Foundation, she serves on numerous boards including Project Enterprise, Sirleaf Market Women's Fund and African Women's Development Fund USA. She was educated at Georgetown, Harvard and Oxford universities.

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Jennifer Drogula

Jennifer is a corporate attorney with experience handling cross-border transactions in more than twenty-five countries. She worked in private practice for almost twenty years, most recently as a partner in the Corporate Department of Wilmer, Cutler, Pickering, Hale and Dorr LLP.  She has advised clients in transnational business transactions including mergers and acquisitions, joint ventures, venture capital and private equity investments and debt financings and has advised fund managers and investors in connection with investment fund formation and operation.  Jennifer also has experience in technology transactions, including the licensing and acquisition of intellectual property.  Jennifer’s pro bono work has included representing social business enterprises, including microfinance institutions.  Jennifer taught a course on social business enterprise at the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in 2008 and will be teaching in an international transactions clinic at the University of Michigan Law School during the 2009-2010 academic year.  She received her B.A. from the University of Texas at Austin and her J.D. and LL.M. from Duke University School of Law. She is admitted to the District of Columbia and New York bars.  Jennifer is conversant in Spanish, French and Russian.

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Vikram Gandhi

Vikram Gandhi is Head of the Global Financial Institutions Group (FIG) at Credit Suisse. In addition to significant client responsibilities, Mr. Gandhi is responsible for the coordination and integration of CSFB’s financial institutions capabilities across a wide range of advisory and financing products, including derivatives and structure products.
Before joining CSFB, Mr. Gandhi spent 16 years at Morgan Stanley where he held various positions including the Co-Head of the Financial Institutions Practice; Head of Institutional Strategy and Business Development; Chief Operating Officer for the Firm’s E-Commerce Steering Committee; and President, Morgan Stanley India.

Mr. Gandhi has a wealth of experience in being involved in various financial institutions high-profile M&A transactions and financings across the globe; such as Bank of America’s acquisition of Fleet, the sale of National Processing Company to Bank of America, merger of Chase Manhattan and Chemical Bank, the sale of First Fidelity to First Union, and Bank of Boston’s acquisition to Bay Bank.

Mr. Gandhi received his B. Com from the University of Bombay and an MBA from the Harvard Business School, where he was designated a Baker Scholar. He is also a qualified Chartered Accountant.

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James L. Greenberg

Jim Greenberg brings to Grameen Foundation a passion for microfinance, defeating poverty on a massive scale and a focus on India.  He currently serves on Grameen Foundation's India Advisory Council and is slated to be Grameen Foundation's nominee for Director of Grameen Capital India.  Not only has Grameen Foundation benefited from Jim's valuable knowledge, seasoned insight and strategic direction, but he and his wife also helped to launch the India Initiative.

Jim has a rich executive and management background in international business.  In 1995 he became the founding partner of DevCorp International E.C., a company-based venture development and investment company with active projects spanning shrimp farming, petrochemicals, light manufacturing, and telecomm/IT.  Jim is currently Chairman and CEO of the company.

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Richard S. Gunther

Mr. Gunther divides his time between a successful business career focusing primarily on venture capital and security investments and a variety of active public service involvements. He serves as a member of the State of California Commission on Aging, and continues his involvement with Americans for Peace,  as a member of the Board and Executive Committee.

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Susan McCaw

Susan McCaw is President of COM Investments, a private investment firm. From 2005–2007, Mrs. McCaw served as the US Ambassador to the Republic of Austria.  Before serving as Ambassador, Mrs. McCaw was President of COM Investments. Formerly, Mrs. McCaw was a Principal at Robertson Stephens & Company, a San Francisco-based investment bank.  Mrs. McCaw also worked as an Associate in Robertson Stephens Venture Capital Group.  Prior to this, Mrs. McCaw served as a Business Analyst for McKinsey & Company in New York and Hong Kong.

Mrs. McCaw is a member of Stanford University’s Board of Trustees and served as Co-Chair of Stanford’s $1 billion Campaign for Undergraduate Education.  Mrs. McCaw is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Council of American Ambassadors. Mrs. McCaw is also the Director of the Craig and Susan McCaw Foundation focusing on education and international economic development projects.  Previously, Mrs. McCaw was the Co-founder and Board Chair of Team Read, a literacy program for at-risk elementary grade students.  Formerly, she served on the Investment Committee of the University of Washington

Mrs. McCaw earned a BA in Economics from Stanford University, where she was senior class president and graduated with highest honors and distinction, and an MBA from Harvard Business School.

Mrs. McCaw was born and raised in Orange County, California.  She is married to Craig McCaw and has three children.  They currently reside in Santa Barbara, CA.

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Yvette Neier

Ms. Neier has a marketing management practice serving both nonprofit and commercial clients. Ms. Neier was a marketing director at the Monsanto Company from 1965 to 1991. She was a founder of Maya Hands, Inc., a nonprofit women's development program in Guatemala.

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David Russell

David H. Russell was the Founder, CEO and President of Dalcomp, Inc. which served NYC based banks and stock brokerage firms. Dalcomp provided computer software and telecommunications services for automating syndications of new securities issued. The company was sold to Thompson Financial Service in January 1995. David is now involved with gold mining in Chile and Oregon and energy resources. He is also developing new technologies to recover gas, oil and coal within the US.

For the past 15 years David has dedicated himself to helping the lowest income people worldwide take their first steps out of poverty by providing seed capital to entrepreneurs sothat they may launch their own microenterprise. David is a member of the Grameen Foundation Program Committee.

David H. Russell was educated at Emory University and New York University Business School. He has served on several corporate and non-profit boards.

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Muhammad Yunus, Director, Emeritus

Recipient of the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize, Professor Muhammad Yunus is internationally recognized for his work in poverty alleviation and the empowerment of poor women. Professor Yunus has successfully melded capitalism with social responsibility to create the Grameen Bank, a microcredit institution committed to providing small amounts of working capital to the poor for self-employment. From its origins as an action-research project in 1976, Grameen Bank has grown to provide collateral-free loans to 7.5 million clients in more than 82,072 villages in Bangladesh and 97% of whom are women. Over the last two decades, Grameen Bank has loaned out over 6.5 billion dollars to the poorest of the poor, while maintaining a repayment rate consistently above 98%. The innovative approach to poverty alleviation pioneered by Professor Yunus in a small village in Bangladesh has inspired a global microcredit movement reaching out to millions of poor women from rural South Africa to inner city Chicago. His autobiography, "Banker to the Poor: Microlending and the Battle Against World Poverty," has been translated in French, Italian, Spanish, English, Japanese, Portuguese, Dutch, Gujarati, Chinese, German, Turkish and Arabic.

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Alex Counts, President & CEO

Alex Counts is President and CEO of Grameen Foundation, a nonprofit organization focused on enabling the poor to escape poverty, using microfinance and technology. Counts founded Grameen Foundation and became its CEO in 1997, after working in microfinance and poverty reduction for 10 years.

A Cornell University graduate, Counts’ commitment to poverty eradication deepened as a Fulbright scholar in Bangladesh, where he witnessed innovative poverty solutions being developed by Grameen Bank. He trained under Dr. Muhammad Yunus, the founder and managing director of Grameen Bank, and co-recipient of the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize.

Counts has propelled Grameen Foundation’s philosophy through his writings: Small Loans, Big Dreams: How Nobel Prize Winner Muhammad Yunus and Microfinance Are Changing the World. Counts has also been published in the Washington Post, the International Herald Tribune, the Miami Herald, the Christian Science Monitor and elsewhere.

Counts chairs the Fonkoze USA board and is the immediate past chair of Project Enterprise’s board. He sits on the Advisory Council of the Center for Financial Inclusion, the Advisory Board of the ThinkGlobal Arts Foundation and Co-Chairs the Microenterprise Coalition.

Counts previously served as the legislative director of RESULTS, as a regional project manager for CARE-Bangladesh and speaks Bengali.

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Si White, Treasurer

Si was CFO for the Grameen Foundation before joining the board in April 2009 bringing over 25 years of management and financial experience to the organization.  He has spent his career in a variety of global financial leadership roles with Ernst & Young, PepsiCo, Nestle and Cisco Systems.  In addition to his passion for Microfinance he has worked for many years using his Spanish language and finance skills to help low income families with their taxes and financial planning.  He also works with environmental issues as a board member of Save the Bay in San Francisco.  Si, a CPA, and a native Californian graduated from California State University, Northridge. He and his wife, Cathy Pendo, have three children.

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Peter Cowhey

Peter Cowhey is the UC San Diego Dean and Qualcomm Professor of Communications and Technology Policy at the School of International Relations and Pacific Studies. In 2009 he was on leave from the university to join the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative as Senior Counselor for policy planning. His responsibilities included working with Ambassador Kirk on the strategic agenda for trade policy while supervising the work of USTR offices for the Americas, Europe and the Middle East, Market Access and Competitiveness, Intellectual Property, and Services and Investment. 

Cowhey is the former Director of the University of California system's Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation and head of policy studies for the California Institute on Telecommunications and Information Technology. Cowhey's research has especially focused on the political economy of international trade, investment and regulatory policies. He served as the Senior Counselor to the Chairman and Chief of the International Bureau of the Federal Communications Commission from 1994 to 1997. During this time the Commission completely revamped its global competition policies and worked intensively with USTR on forging a WTO agreement on basic telecommunications services.

Cowhey's newest book is Transforming Global Information and Communications Markets: The Political Economy of Change (MIT Press, 2009). Cowhey serves on the boards of the Grameen Foundation, the Institute of the Americas, and the California Council on Science and Technology. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Pacific Council on International Affairs. Cowhey holds a bachelor's degree in foreign service from Georgetown University, and a master's and Ph.D. in political science from the University of California, Berkeley.



 

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