MMS Speakers

Aletha Ling, Executive Director, Fundamo

Aletha Ling is Executive Director of Fundamo, responsible for global business development. Aletha has pursued a successful career in the IT industry for the past 30 years, and has a thorough grounding, experience and insight in technology, sales, marketing, and general management.

After heading up IBM´s Software Business she left in 1993 to start the very successful and respected technology company Software Futures, growing it to a 300 person software and services business in three years before selling it to the JSE listed company, Computer Configurations Holdings (CCH), she stayed on as a board director. Aletha was ultimately appointed as the CEO of CCH and upon its merger with MGX served in various executive positions.

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Álvaro Martín Enríquez, Partner and Head of innovation at Analistas Financieros Internacionales (Afi)

Partner and Head of innovation at Analistas Financieros Internacionales (Afi), Álvaro Martín Enríquez graduated in telecommunications engineering from Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (Spain), after a two-term stay at the Institut National Polytechnique de Grenoble (France). Before joining Afi, he worked as a researcher for the COIT Chair in Regulation, Markets and Public Policies at Universidad Politécnica de Madrid. During this period, he was also a working member of GRETEL, a Spanish telecommunications regulation think tank.

His background has strongly influenced his professional focus on the analysis of ICT and innovation, particularly in the financial sector. He has worked in several projects for telecoms operators, banks, the Spanish public administration, the European Commission and the Inter-American Development Bank, among other public and private institutions.

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Amit Mattatia, President & Chief Executive Officer, Trivnet

Amit joined Trivnet towards the end of 2007 to lead the Company through its next phase of development. Under his management, Trivnet has secured an additional round of financing and has continued expanding its customer base and strategic partnerships.

Before joining Trivnet, Amit served as VP and General Manager at Comverse, where he turned-around and quadrupled the sales of the MMS business unit. He continued to lead the Integrated Messaging organization and its three business units to double their business year-over-year.

Prior to that, Amit served as CEO of Speedwise Technologies where he brought the company to be a leader in Internet optimization over wireless networks. He also co-founded Compaq Israel, merged it later on with Digital Equipment Israel and served as Head of Marketing for the combined organization.

Amit holds a B.Sc in Computer Science from the Hebrew University, Jerusalem and an MBA from INSEAD, Fontainebleau, France.

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Amol Patel, Head of Emerging Markets, PayPal Mobile

Amol Patel is presently Head of Emerging Markets at PayPal Mobile. His roles at PayPal have included expanding PayPal’s mobile product footprint across Europe and Asia Pacific, and developing PayPal’s mobile API solution. Previously, Amol was Founder & CEO of ConvergeLabs, a mobile VAS company that launched India’s first mobile ticketing and payments service. He has held senior marketing and engineering positions at Intel Corporation, Cirrus Logic, Sun Microsystems, and ADC Telecommunications. Amol has co-authored several patents in the Mobile, Internet and Payments space. He holds a BS (Honors) in EECS from University of California at Berkeley, MS in EE from Stanford University, and MBA from Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University.

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Andi Dervishi, Practise Lead, Electronic Payments and Marketplaces, IFC

Andi Dervishi leads IFC's investments in electronic payments, including mobile banking. He has over 15 years of company building expertise having funded Over 30 early and early growth stage companies throughout the world. In The Payments world Andi has led over 11 investment transactions for IFC. His group is working With telcos, banks and independents to establish the infrastructure necessary For Emerging markets to adopt electronic money. In broader terms, IFC and the World Bank group are by far the largest investor and advisor on matters of electronic money and payments, covering all aspects from big picture and preparatory regulatory reform, to hands on direct private investments. They use the large operational footprint in over 130 countries and the very large portfolio of banks, telcos, utility companies and other service providers, to add significant value to companies they engage with.

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Andres Fontao Canovas, Head of Mobile Banking, Bankinter

Andres Fontao, a dual citizen of the US and Spain currently resides in Madrid. Andres holds a BA in International Politics & Economics from Middlebury College and an MBA from Instituto de Empresa in Madrid. Andres began his professional career in Mexico where he held various positions for media giant TV Azteca and mobile start-up Unefon. After receiving his MBA, Andres joined Valoris, a management consultancy specialized in mobile telecommunications. While at Valoris, Andres advised mobile operators throughout Europe helping define product and service offerings and participating in mobile operator launches (MNO and MVNO) in Belgium, Germany and Spain.

Andres is currently Head of Mobile Banking for Bankinter, a position he has held since 2007. He initially joined Bankinter to help launch the bank's own MVNO and in 2008 Andres assumed responsibility of mobile strategy, defining the bank’s strategic plan for mobile banking. As Head of Mobile Banking, Andres is responsible for product development and management of mobile banking services, definition and implementation of m-banking strategy, launch of new mobile services and applications, and definition of marketing mix for channel adoption and usage.

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Anthony Belpaire, General Manager, Alcatel-Lucent Mobile Wallet

Anthony Belpaire is the General Manager of touchatag™, an Alcatel-Lucent Venture. Touchatag™ enables consumers, applications developers and business to link everyday's objects with online applications using 2D barcodes/Near Field Communications.

Touchatag™ is used in a variety of environments: for example in an in-home application a father can use touchatag™ to link his toddler’s teddy bear to an online story about that same bear; in an outdoor environment touchatag™makes it possible for a visitor to an art gallery to wave his Near Field Communication (NFC) enabled mobile phone at a painting and then see the painter’s Wikipedia profile appear on the phone’s screen; or in a business/logistics environment a cleaning company can, for example, use it to record that a room has been successfully cleaned through a simple touch of an NFC-enabled mobile phone to a touchatag-linked NFC tag that has been placed in the room.

Prior joining touchatag™, Anthony headed a number of start-ups in the online media and IT security domain from start to exit as Certipost, Info2clear and GlobalSign. He started his career as Investment analyst at the innovation holding of a leading Belgian Publisher Corelio.

Anthony Belpaire has a Master in Telecommunications and graduated from the University of Ghent (Belgium). Upon completion, he undertook further studies on AI at the University of Valencia (Spain) and Intelligent Agents at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (USA).

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Bruno Akpaka, General Manager, Mobile Money, MTN Ghana

Bruno has been assisting MTN Ghana and other MTN operations units in West and Central Africa to implement, develop and expand its Mobile Money Business operations.

As the leading Mobile telecommunication network in emerging markets, MTN intends to develop and maintain a significant portion of the burgeoning data market and converged telecommunications arena offering basic financial services Banking, IT Media and broadcasting services. Bruno’s experience (IT, telecoms and banking industry) helps to deliver and to implement mobile banking strategy; it makes him the obvious choice for this relatively new initiative in Ghana and the surrounding market.

Since the launch of Mobile Money (his latest baby!) in Ghana six months ago, more than 200,000 subscribers have chosen to enjoy the service; 2,800+ Mobile Money Authorized Merchants (cash in, cash out, money transfer, ...) believe in a bright future for this service. 2010 will see the increase of banks embarked on board as many of them are knocking on the door. For Bruno this is an exciting moment: the financial inclusion is in action!

Before being appointed as General Manager in charge of Mobile Money, he has occupied various positions (from Front Office Manager to Marketing & Commercial Director) in varied professional experiences (FMCG, IT, Telecoms, Banking). Through Europe and MEA continents, Bruno’s main function has either been to build from scratch a new project/business or Business Development. Apart from working, his hobbies are to practise golf or football and read any kind of book. Very eclectic and curious! His passion: quality time with his family.

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Chris Chan, Manager, Mobile Commerce, Celcom

Chris Chan is a core member of Celcom’s pioneer Mobile Commerce team in Malaysia who recently launched Celcom AirCash, the region’s first USSD-based mobile commerce service. He heads the commercial aspects of Celcom’s mobile commerce activities covering pricing and product strategies, business case modeling, partnership acquisition, business development and regulatory relations and also plays an active role in the development and marketing execution of Celcom’s M-Commerce products and services in the domestic market.

In addition, Chris is part of the Axiata Group’s regional M-Commerce team currently working on an airtime and money transfer hub to support Axiata’s mobile network operator base of over 100 million subscribers. Chris’ contributions to this new project cover product and service development, financial and regulatory processes, partnership and business development as well as commercial modeling.

In the last 3 years, Chris has been actively involved in developing M-Commerce for Celcom and over the last 6 months has had a dual role in both domestic and cross-border product development. He has also been quite active on the conference circuit appearing in previous MMT and GSMA events around the region.

Prior to entering the M-Commerce industry, Chris was involved in the financial services industry covering Prepaid Visa Cards with Tune Money, one of Malaysia’s first prepaid card issuers. Before that, Chris spent 8 years in the advertising and marketing industry with employment experiences with various international and local advertising agencies in Malaysia and Vietnam.

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Christopher Collins, Head of Evolution of Services New Products, Entel PCS

Christopher Collins is the Head of the evolution of services at Entel, one of the major telecommunication companies in Chile. As a part of the new products department he is in charge to lead business projects that does not relate to the traditional voice/vas models. In January 2010 together with Banco de Chile lead the team that launched “Cuenta Móvil” the first major mobile money service in Chile.

Prior to work in new products, since 2003, he was part the technology evolution area, developing the long term roadmap for the company and making sure that the technology chosen could fit within the vision, there he worked in the deployment and launch of the 3G network, LTE trials and in the auctions for new spectrum.

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Coenraad Jonker, Director of Community Banking, Standard Bank of South Africa

Coenraad Jonker has a B luris, LLB and MBA (all cum laude).

Coenraad is Director: Community Banking at Standard Bank.

He began his career as a lecturer in constitutional law and jurisprudence in 1993. The following year he joined a firm of attorneys and in 1995 was admitted as an attorney.

He joined Edward Nathan Corporate Law Advisers in March 1996 as an associate and became its Chief Executive Officer in August 2000. In that year he also joined Nedcor Investment Bank’s executive committee and later served on the executive committee of Nedbank Corporate. He joined Standard Bank in 2005.

He has experience in corporate law, mergers & acquisitions, employment and employee benefits law, all aspects of general management, corporate governance and strategy formulation and execution. He has a keen interest in developing markets.

He lectures the MBA course at the Gordon Institute of Business Science on doing business in informal markets.

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David Sharpe, Head of Products, Digicel Haiti

David joined Digicel in October 2007 in the role of Head of Products & Pricing for Digicel Haiti. His primary role is to lead development and management of all products, services and strategy and to continue Digicel’s role in bringing innovation to Haiti.

Prior to his role in Digicel, David worked with a variety of operators between locations in Africa, United States and the Caribbean. In 2003 as Manager, Products & Solutions for Telecel International, David helped transform Fixed Operator Uganda Telecom to launch Mango Prepaid GSM, and held key role in launching the UT ISP brand in Uganda. Other projects have included deployment of VSAT terminals in remote Africa, Wireless Broadband deployments, LAN & Network Administration, and managing logistics for all cellular infrastructure deployments from USA to Africa.

Prior to this, David served honorably for 4+ years of military service with the US Marine Corps. He brings with him more than 8 years experience in Product Development & Management within International Telecom companies, and 3 more years of IT experience previously certified as a Certified Novell Engineer and receiving a diploma in Network Administration.

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Daryl Collins, Bankable Frontiers and Author, Portfolios of the Poor

Daryl Collins is co-author of Portfolios of the Poor and Senior Associate at Bankable Frontier Associates, a niche consulting practice in Boston (see www.bankablefrontier.com). She was the principal investigator of the South African Financial Diaries, the results of which can be found on www.financialdiaries.com. She is now leading the research efforts at Bankable Frontiers, building on an expertise in the demand-side dynamics development finance. She has recently completed another Financial Diaries, a pilot study of small businesses, and is currently undergoing a revisit study of the original South African diaries households.

Daryl began her career as an emerging market economist at a New York investment bank before moving to South Africa in the late 1990’s. She ultimately joined the finance faculty of the University of Cape Town, where she leveraged a successful career in portfolio management into research on the financial behavior of the poor. She has published extensively on financial market behavior in developing countries. Daryl holds bachelors and masters degrees in economics from the London School of Economics, and she is currently completing doctoral work at New York University.

Daryl and her husband, Brian Talbot, recently moved to the Boston area with their daughter, Isabella.

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Frederic Schepens, Executive Vice President, Belgacom

Frédéric Schepens joined Belgacom on 2 January 1997 and is now Executive Vice President Mobile Financial Services & Strategic Business Development at Belgacom ICS a subsidiary within the Belgacom, Swisscom & MTN Group. In his role of EVP he heads the the Mobile Financial Services Division and is responsible for the creation of new services in the international mobile ecosystems of which Mobile Money. He is also a Judge for the Mobile Innovation Market at the GSMA.

Frédéric held several management roles within Belgacom ICS, he founded and managed the companies for Belgacom in the Asia Pacific region. Since the start of the company Frédéric has led a key role in the unprecedented growth of the company.

Prior to joining Belgacom, Frédéric was in the core teams of setting up mobile operators in the Netherlands (KPN Mobile) and in Belgium (Mobistar), which gives him a telecom experience of over 15 years.

Frédéric obtained a Bachelor in Business Administration in Antwerp and an MBA in Paris. Is married and has 3 children.

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Gavin Krugel, Director of Strategic Development for Mobile Money at the GSM Association.

One of Global Telecoms Business ‘top forty industry leaders under the age of forty’, and predicted to be one of the executives who will run telecoms by 2020, Gavin has a ubiquitous understanding of Mobile Money across the industry. He has successfully driven the GSMA Mobile Money for the Unbanked programme with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, initiated entry into financial services including international remittances, is heavily involved with the GSMA Mobile Money Summit and is working alongside world and industry leaders to promote the cause of Mobile Money.

Gavin has a passion for convergence between the mobile and adjacent industries. He studied Strategic Leadership in Microfinance at Harvard Business School and is completing his MBA in Global Business Management at the Grenoble Graduate School of Business in France where he has specialised in International Business Law, International Financial Management, and the Global Business Management Environment.

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Haridas Nair, Area VP, mCommerce, Sybase 365, Inc.

Mr. Nair manages Operations for mCommerce within Sybase 365. He is responsible specifically for driving strategy and solutions for mBanking and mPayments. Prior to this role, he was responsible for driving strategy and evaluating emerging technologies for a three to five year horizon within the Information Technology Solutions Group at Sybase. During his tenure at Sybase, Mr. Nair has led marketing & product management for Sybase’s data management products, including Adaptive Server Enterprise (ASE), Replication Server, Real-Time Data Services and Mirror Activator.

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Ignatius E. Cobbina, Head, Transaction Banking, Fidelity Bank Limited

My name is Ignatius Essien Cobbina. I currently work with Fidelity Bank Limited in Ghana, West Africa. I am the Head of Transaction Banking and responsible for the bank’s Electronic banking, Cards Business, Mobile Money, Cash Management and Remittances / Money Transfer Services. My key strategic responsibility is to leverage on Technology to deliver solutions to both customer and non-customer, especially the unbanked population as well as Microfinance solutions.

We have successfully partnered with MTN and other banks to launch MTN Mobile Money Service in Ghana and Fidelity Bank is the leading bank in this regard. I was a key member in the steering committee prior to the launch to ensure that all regulatory and platform issues were resolved. We are also working with other Telco’s to achieve the same.

Prior to joining Fidelity Bank I was working for the Ecobank Group and was responsible for Card Business Operations among other portfolios. I have had extensive training in cards business through the Visa business school. I was involved in several product innovations and also worked as an internal auditor and systems administrator. This gave me a good advantage to understand the electronic banking and EFT Payments systems.

In all I have in all 15 years working experience in banking.

I hold a Bsc Degree in Accounting and also a Certificate in Bank Card Management by Visa International and IFS.

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Jean-Pierre Gressin, Head of Alliances & Partnerships, Oberthur Technologies

Jean-Pierre started his career in London where he worked in innovation in Digital right management, Multimedia and Signal Processing arenas for the Telecom market. Owner, he successfully created a state-of-the-art Sound recognition technology designed to automatically transcribe polyphonic Music. He also worked as senior consultant at Air France and Sagem Communication. Jean-Pierre joined Oberthur Technologies in 2005 as Marketing Product Manager for mobile application & solutions. He then created and headed Strategic alliances, developing partnerships with industry leaders worldwide in Device management, Mobile payment & banking, Digital security, Roaming, Contactless, Charging, Location Based Services, Social networking and Instant Messaging. After leading marketing for mobile services & solutions, Jean-Pierre developed the Mobile financial Services offer leveraging on Oberthur Technologies’ key relationships with banks, mobile carriers and financial institutions to propose secure end-to-end mobile money services. He often delivers speeches in GSM conferences worldwide to further promote value added services. Jean-Pierre has a Bachelor of Mathematics and Physics from University of Orsay and a Master of Science in Microelectronics and Telecommunications from Institut National Polytechnique de Grenoble, France.

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Jeff Hindle, Product and Business Development, Scotia Bank

Jeff manages the International Bank’s Product and Business development function for Retail and Small Business customers which include Cards, Deposits and Payment products across 28 countries.

Over 20 years of leadership experience in Communications, Technology, and Financial Service industries in a variety of areas, including Marketing, Segment Management, Product Development, Service Delivery and Strategic Planning.

Prior to joining Scotiabank in 2008, Jeff was with HP Outsourcing Services as IT Security Lead and Delivery Executive for two major Canadian Banks.

In addition, Jeff worked at Royal Bank of Canada’s Smart Card, eCommerce, Emerging Products & Global Payment groups, and with Bell Canada in Network Engineering and Marketing.

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Jojo Malolos, Head of Financial Services, SMART

Jojo is currently the GROUP HEAD for Financial Services of the Wireless Consumer Divisino of Smart Communications. Inc. He has worked for Smart Communications for almost 6 years and spent his earlier years in the telecoms industry as a Professional Services Consultant with the IBM Business Consulting Services, with PricewaterhouseCoopers Consulting where he held director and Telco Services Sector business unit head roles in Singapore, Thailand and the Philippines. His areas of focus in his consulting career covered strategic operations management, mergers, acquisitions and integration and organizational change management.

At the Financial Services group in SMART, Jojo leads a team of business heads who all focus on creating and harnessing new revenue business streams for the Mobile Services Division. Initially founded on the vast potential of its mobile commerce platform aptly called "Smart Money", the financial services team has expanded the development and execution of new business models around sourcing and usage of funds that fuel commerce across divergent customer segments via telecommunications channels. His team has spearheaded Smart's global mobile financial service initiatives that aim to establish and reinforce the importance of mobile commerce in the global telecommunications play and this had earned them the recognition of being Asia’s best mobile money service and best mobile money for the unbanked awards in the recently concluded GSMA Asia Mobile Awards last November 2009.

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Jürgen Wassmann, Regional Head, Innovative Platforms, MasterCard Worldwide

Jürgen Wassmann is Regional Head, Innovative Platforms for MasterCard Worldwide. Jürgen leads the development and commercialization of payment product platforms that create a sustainable competitive advantage for MasterCard and its customers in the Latin American and Caribbean Region.

He is responsible for the development and management of strategic innovation initiatives in disruptive areas, with a particular focus on eCommerce, Mobile Financial Services, Remittances/P2P, Authentication, EMV Contact and Contactless Chip technologies, PayPass/Transit, BillPayment, and Client Services Platforms (Reward and Benefits).

Prior to assuming this role, Jürgen spend 12 years at Visa Inc. where he was the responsible for Emerging Channels and Products. He was instrumental in launching remote payment solutions in emerging markets “Mobile Pay” (Brazil) and “Pago Movil” (Peru) expanding electronic payment acceptance, and the regions first NFC payment program. He was also involved in developing and promoting the use of authentication for card not present transactions: 3DSecure and Dynamic authentication enabling acceptance and confidence among consumers and merchants when conducting online and mobile transactions.

Jürgen received his Bachelor of Science degree in International Finance and Marketing from The University of Miami, and earned his Master in Business Administration from The Fuqua School of Business at Duke University.

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Khalid Fellahi, Senior Vice President, Head of Africa & Global Head of Mobile Transaction Services, Western Union

As the Western Union Senior Vice President for Africa Mr Fellahi is responsible for 51 countries with more than 17,000 agent locations.

In 2009, Mr Fellahi has been heavily involved in shaping Western Union’s strategy in Mobile Money and since January 2010, has taken global responsibility for the Mobile Transaction Services division of Western Union.

He joined Western Union in October 2002 and has more than 20 years experience working in different industries such as Paribas / Groupe Compagnie Bancaire, Price Waterhouse Management Consultants and held positions of CFO and MD in SMEs in the service industry before joining Western Union.

He has an engineering degree from the National Institute of Applied Sciences in France (INSA-Lyon) with a major in Information Technology, and an MBA from INSEAD.

He is based in Casablanca, Morocco.

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Lauro Gonzalez, Microfinance Coordinator, FGV

Lauro Gonzalez holds a PhD in Economics from FGV-EESP. He was a Visiting Scholar at Columbia University in 2004. He was also a fellow of the Microfinance Management Institute (MFMI) in 2005. Currently, he is Professor of Finance at FGV-EAESP and head of the Center for Microfinance Studies at the same institution. His main research areas are Microfinance and Credit Market.

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Mark Pickens, Microfinance Specialist, CGAP

Mark Pickens is a Microfinance Specialist with CGAP, a policy and research center working to improve access to finance for the unserved in developing countries. CGAP is housed at the World Bank, and its Technology Program is supported by the UK’s Department for International Development and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Mark leads CGAP’s work on customer adoption with new banking technologies and the business case for entering the branchless banking space. His work has been quoted in The Economist, The Banker, and CNN.com. Prior to joining CGAP, Pickens worked as a microfinance consultant for several banks and microlenders, launched an award-winning web portal for progressive news in New York City, and founded an enterprise extending basic health care in Madagascar. He holds a master's from Columbia University.

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Mohammad Khan, President and Founder, VivoTech

Mohammad Khan is the President and Founder of ViVOtech – the market leader in NFC mobile payments, promotions, Over-The-Air (OTA) provisioning infrastructure software, transaction management software, and contactless terminals. Prior to ViVOtech, Mr. Khan joined VeriFone in its early stage where he held several management positions during the 15 years he spent with VeriFone. Mr. Khan helped the company develop its payment automation systems and later helped successfully market these products in more than 96 countries. Mr. Khan was also a co-founder of the Internet Commerce business for VeriFone. Mohammad Khan has been recognized as a leader of the Electronic Payments Industry by the Transaction Trends Magazine and as a “Mover and Shaker” of the Electronic Payments Industry by the Transaction World magazine. Mr. Khan holds a master's degree in electrical engineering from the University of Hawaii.

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Nawal Gharmili Sefrioui, Senior Marketing Manager, Medi Telecom

Nawal is the Mobile Money Project Leader at Medi Telecom, the largest private mobile Operator in Morocco. She was involved in the project since its very first stage and is leading the implementation of all related workstreams (technical, regulatory, distribution, marketing, etc)

Prior to that, she was in charge of marketing data Value Added Services including 3G broadband, mobile internet and messaging.

Nawal has also played a key role in developing mobile content services in Morocco as content and partnership manager for Medi Telecom.

Nawal has over 12 years of experience, 8 in telecommunication sector.

Nawal holds an Engineering Degree in Computer Science from Mohammadia School of Engineering (EMI) and an MBA in finance and marketing from Wayne State University as a Fulbright scholar.

Nawal is married and mother of two kids.

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Odilon Almeida, Senior Vice President and Managing Director, South America, Western Union

Odilon Almeida currently serves Western Union’s Senior Vice President and Managing Director for the South America region. In this role, he is responsible for a total of 12 countries, including Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, the Falklands, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay and Venezuela. This territory encompasses more than 13,000 locations.

Almeida joined Western Union in 2002 as Regional Vice President, Southern Cone, Americas. In 2006, his responsibilities were extended to additional countries, and in 2008, he was appointed Senior Vice President for the South America Region.

Prior to joining Western Union, Almeida developed his 23-year career in major organizations including FleetBoston Financial, The Coca-Cola Company and Colgate-Palmolive, working around the Americas in Brazil, Canada, Mexico and the United States. During that time, he accumulated solid experience in general management with strong background in marketing, operations and finance.

Almeida has two graduate degrees – one in Civil Engineering from Maua Engineering School in São Paulo and another in Business Administration from the University of São Paulo. He received his MBA in Business Administration with specialization in Marketing at Getulio Vargas Foundation, São Paulo. He further enriched his general management development at the International Institute of Management Development (I.M.D.), Lausanne.

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Olga Morawczynski, Visiting Researcher, Microsoft Research India

Olga Morawczynski spent four years studying the adoption, usage and impact of M-PESA as part of her doctoral degree. She has also studied mobile money and branchless banking systems in other countries including India, Pakistan, Tanzania and Uganda. Olga has collaborated with several partners during her research including CGAP, Microsoft Research India and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Currently, Olga is working with the Grameen Foundation in Kampala. She is developing, and piloting, a mobile application that aims to enhance financial literacy at the bottom of the pyramid (BoP).

Olga’s work has received recognition. She was awarded a PhD scholarship by Microsoft Research. Her paper on M-PESA was also noted by the GSMA Development Fund Report as being in the “top 20” of the field. Olga continues to publish in peer-reviewed journals, present at international conferences and undertake consultancy opportunities.

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Richard Mwami, Head of Mobile Money, MTN Uganda

Richard Mwami is the Head of MobileMoney at MTN Uganda. He has worked for MTN for a period of seven years. Richard was involved with the development and set up of the MobileMoney business from inception. Uganda was the first country to launch (March 09) in the entire MTN Group.

In 2003, Richard was involved in setting up Village Phone in Uganda – a partnership between MTN and Grameen Foundation USA. This initiative went on to break new ground by taking telecommunication services in the deep rural areas of Uganda.

Mwami holds a degree in Geography & Political Science from Makerere University Kampala. He went on to do a Post Graduate Diploma in Management from Uganda Management Institute. He holds an MBA in Marketing from Makerere University Business School and is a qualified Chartered Marketer.

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Michael O'Brien - Senior Vice President - Business Development, Syniverse

Michael O’Brien was appointed senior vice president of business development in 2007 and leads the company’s mobile commerce initiatives. Previously he had served as vice president of marketing since August 2001 and had been responsible for product management and business development for all products and services globally. Before his appointment to vice president, Mike served in a number of other positions in the company, including assistant vice president of marketing from November 2000 to August 2001 and marketing director for North American wireless from June 1999 to November 2000. From January to June 1999, he worked as an independent consultant. He also served as director of operations at GE LogistiCom, a satellite communications business. Prior to that, Mike was a product manager responsible for network monitoring and wireless data products. He holds a bachelor’s degree in computer science from the University of Virginia.

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Pablo Montesano, Director, New Businesses, Telefónica

Prior to joining Telefónica, Pablo worked in Strategy Consultancy at Arthur D. Little (2000-2008) and also held Sales and Marketing positions at Coca-Cola (1998-2000) and BBVA Bank (1995,1996)

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Sasha Natasha Monyamane, Group Executive : AML, Ethics and Compliance, Vodacom Group Limited

Dr Sasha Monyamane is the Money Laundering Control Officer for Vodacom Group Limited, and Group Executive: AML, Ethics and compliance. Her job entails ensuring that Vodacom meets its Legal compliance obligations and conducts its business to the highest international ethical standards. She joined Vodacom in 2004 after careers as an academic and in the corporate world. Previously deputy dean and acting dean of law at the University of Lesotho, she has held positions as a non-executive director of the Central Bank of Lesotho and Vodacom Lesotho and was a member of the management team of Sekha-Metsi Investment Consortium, which acquired a stake in Vodacom's Lesotho operations. She also worked for Uthingo Management, formerly South Africa's national lottery operator, in an executive compliance position. Monyamane studied for her BA (law) and bachelor of law degrees at the National University of Lesotho before completing an LLM degree at Monash University in Australia. She also received a PhD in law from Strathclyde School of Business in Scotland, with a thesis on corporate social responsibility and its place in corporate law and governance.

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Satish Menon, Bangalore Project, Citibank

Satish Menon is the Executive Vice President of Citibank’s Growth Ventures and Innovation driving Asian operations for the team. Besides Venture investing, the team looks at developing and incubating cutting edge, business transformative solutions for Citibank.

Satish is based in Singapore has over 16 years of extensive experience in the Mobile, Internet Banking and Payment space. This includes 10 years in Citi where he was the eBusiness Head (Internet and Mobile) for Asia Pac and has also driven several successful Mobile innovations for Citi India in previous roles.

Satish is a regular speaker in industry forums and his views on Mobile have featured in leading international publications in the US, Europe and Asia such as American Banker, Boston Globe, Contact less Intelligence and Asian Bankers Journal.

Prior to Citibank, he has worked in other multinationals such as Hutchison Telecom and Godrej-GE.

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Serge Elkiner, President & Founder, YellowPepper

With an ever-evolving knowledge of global finance under his belt, Elkiner created the Latin American mobile financial services leader, YellowPepper.

In Latin America, Elkiner saw that mobile technology was a viable opportunity to provide basic banking services to the unbanked and underserved, who spend hours each month standing in line to pay bills because they lack the convenience of traditional banking.

Seeing the potential to use pervasive mobile technology to empower consumers, Elkiner developed YellowPepper Mobile Solutions and engineered partnerships with the top financial institutions in Latin America. These relationships have created opportunities with mobile operators and retail organizations, and thereby better access to mobile financial services throughout Latin America.

Prior, Elkiner was Vice President of Business Development for HelloTech Technologies, an Israeli firm providing remote monitoring and mobile payment solutions for vending machines worldwide. Elkiner designed and implemented the company’s mobile offering and played an integral role in the launch of a pilot mobile system along with Aramark and Ed Dooley Vending.

After leaving HelloTech, Elkiner acquired ownership of the original YellowPepper brand in 2004.

A frequent world traveler, Elkiner enjoys touring in Vietnam, Cairo and Dubai and visiting wine regions from the Napa Valley to Tuscany to Cape Town. He has capitalized on these cultural experiences throughout his career. Born and raised in Brussels, the politically-active Elkiner was, at the ripe age of 16, selected as leader of one of Belgium’s largest youth movements.

Elkiner earned his B.S. in Accounting from Boston University. He resides in Miami.

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Staffan Ljung, Director Analytics and Payment, Ericsson

CStaffan Ljung is the director of two fast growing business lines within Ericsson, Analytics and Payments. He has long track record of global assignments in the telecoms industry including launching multiple real-time charging solutions in Latin America as well as the first successful prepaid launch in the US. Other experiences include Payment solutions for online portals and 20+ launches of music and entertainment services reaching 100+ million users. Prior to joining Ericsson he worked as business and IT consultant in American Management Systems and as a management consultant with Edgecom that later was acquired and incorporated in Ericsson Global Services Division. He was also part in setting up Ericsson’s Multimedia division and published a book with Wiley and Sons on the Multimedia opportunity: “Mobile media from concept to cash”.

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Sriraman Jagannathan, mCommerce CEO, Bharti Airtel

Sriram has joined Bharti Airtel in January 2010, to head mCommerce business.

He is a consumer banker with 20 years experience in Citibank, with the last 5 years in Japan as the ebusiness head.

He has previously been the ebusiness head for Citi, India; the treasurer for the joint venture company between Citi and Maruti Udyog Ltd; the securitisation head for Citi in CEEMEA (Central & Eastern Europe, Middle East & Asia); as also the CEO of a credit & collections JV between Citi & MGF.

Sriram started his career with Citi in Cards, representing Citi in Visa & MasterCard fora. His team launched the first POS authorisation device for Diners Club in 1990.

Sriram is an MBA from IIMA and an Engineer from IITD. His experience in managing the virtual business P&L in Japan, perhaps the most advanced digital market, spans across PC & Mobile internet, Automated Loan Machines, Direct Banking and Innovation.

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Zahir Khoja, Executive Director of Mobile Money, Roshan

Zahir Khoja is Executive Director, Mobile Money, for M-Paisa, Afghanistan’s first mobile money transfer service. Zahir brings a wealth of experience in the areas of new business development, sales, marketing and start-up businesses in his role at Roshan.

Prior to joining Roshan, Afghanistan’s leading telecommunications provider, Zahir was responsible for setting up and building the sales channel for a new MVNO in Canada – Virgin Mobile and was regionally responsible for marketing and public relations activities. Zahir was also instrumental in for building the sales channels for dial-up and high-speed (ADSL) internet at TELUS Canada.

Zahir joined Roshan in November 2008, and has been primarily focused on leading M-Paisa to its maximum potential, while ensuring that Roshan is at the forefront of product innovation.

Zahir holds a Bachelor of Commerce Honors Degree in Marketing and Management Information Systems from the University of Ottawa in Canada.

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Xavier Faz, Senior Technical Advisor, CGAP

Xavier is an advisor to CGAP’s Technology Program, where he studies business models for branchless banking and the development of agent networks. More broadly, he supports the agenda on information systems and shared technology platforms in the context of microfinance.

Before joining CGAP, Xavier was VP of Technology and Operations for Bansefi (Mexico), where he led the development of a shared technology platform, the development of MFI network services, and a payments switch for the microfinance sector. Previous to that, Xavier was a consultant at McKinsey and Company, advising corporations in the public and private sectors in topics related to business strategy and technology.

Xavier holds a Master's degree in Computer Science from Stanford University, and an Engineering degree from the Instituto Tecnológico de Monterrey, México.

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