Clay Lowery, our group’s chair, is Vice President at Rock Creek Global Advisors, an international economic policy advisory firm, where he focuses on international financial regulation, sovereign debt, exchange rates, and investment policy. He is also a Visiting Fellow at the Center for Global Development and serves on the Policy Advisory Board at the European Institute. He was an Adjunct Professor at Georgetown University in international finance and a lecturer at the National War College. Clay served as the Assistant Secretary for International Affairs at the US Treasury Department from 2005 to 2009 and chaired the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS). He was the point person on US policy toward Sovereign Wealth Funds; served as the Finance Deputy to the G20, G7, International Monetary Fund and the Financial Stability Forum; and was appointed by the President at various times to be the US representative to the Boards of the World Bank, African Development Bank, European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, and Inter-American Development Bank.
Alex Cobham is Director of Research at the Tax Justice Network. Previously, he was a research fellow at the Center for Global Development. His research focused on illicit financial flows, effective taxation for development, and inequality. He joined CGD in Europe from Save the Children UK, where he was Head of Research. He was formerly at Christian Aid, and before that he was a researcher at Queen Elizabeth House (the Department of International Development at Oxford University), and a junior economics fellow at St Anne’s College, Oxford University. He is the author or co-author of some of the first estimates of the costs of illicit financial flows for developing countries. Ales is also a member of the advisory group to the global consultation on inequalities within the post-2015 development framework.
Louis De Koker holds a chair in law at the School of Law of Deakin University. He was the founding director of the Centre for the Study of Economic Crime (CenSEC) and a Professor of Mercantile Law at the University of Johannesburg. He is the author of the South African Money Laundering and Terror Financing Law and is a member of the Editorial Advisory Committees of the Journal of Money Laundering Control and The Company Lawyer. His research focuses on managing the relationship between financial inclusion and anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing objectives. He has undertaken various research engagements with bodies such as the World Bank and AusAID and has worked closely with the Consultative Group to Assist the Poor (CGAP) and with the Financial Integrity Working Group of the Alliance for Financial Inclusion (AFI). He was invited to serve on the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) project group to draft its financial inclusion guidance in 2011 and to revise it in 2013. Louis is an attorney of the High Court of South Africa.
Maya Forstater has been working on the business of sustainable development for the past 18 years, starting at the New Economics Foundation, and now working as an independent researcher, writer and advisor. She has been involved in setting up, supporting and researching experiments aimed at reshaping the landscape for business: sustainability reports, social and environmental standards, socially responsible investment, consumer labels, multi-sector partnerships and public policies to mobilise private investment. She has worked for organisations including the UNEP, The Transparency and Accountability Initiative, Global Green Growth Initiative, Green Growth Global Forum (3GF), General Electric, Publish What You Fund, The World Business Council for Sustainable Development, UNICEF, The South African Renewables Initiative, Project Catalyst and AccountAbility.
Alan Gelb is a senior fellow at the Center for Global Development. His recent research includes aid and development outcomes, the transition from planned to market economies, the development applications of biometric ID technology, and the special development challenges of resource-rich countries. He has also written extensively on private sector development in Africa. He was previously director of development policy at the World Bank and chief economist for the bank’s Africa region and staff director for the 1996 World Development Report “From Plan to Market.”
Casey Kuhlman is the cofounder and CEO of Eris Industries which is building a platform for smart contracts and legal applications of blockchain technology. Prior to cofounding Eris Industries, Casey was the head of legal information systems at the US Open Data Institute. A lawyer and development practitioner for nearly a decade, Casey has worked extensively in the Horn of Africa, including cofounding the first law firm in Somaliland of which he was the Managing Partner for over four years, and which remains the preeminent private sector legal institution in that region. Casey has also been a New York Times bestselling author, an infantry officer in the Marines, and an avid participant in open source software development.
Ben Leo is a senior fellow at the Center for Global Development and the director of the Rethinking US Development Policy initiative. His work focuses on the rapidly changing development finance environment, with particular emphasis on private capital flows, infrastructure, debt dynamics, the role of multilateral development banks and traditional donors, and domestic resource mobilization. He rejoined CGD after serving as Global Policy Director at the ONE Campaign. Ben has worked at the White House as the director for African affairs, advising the president and national security advisor on central, eastern, and southern African nations and regional economic issues. Additionally, he helped design and implement several development initiatives at the US Treasury, including the Multilateral Debt Relief Initiative and US-Africa Financial Sector Initiative. From 2008 to 2010, Leo led business development efforts in Africa and the Middle East for Cisco Systems.
Michael Levi has been Professor of Criminology at Cardiff University since 1991. He has been conducting UK and international research on the control of white-collar and organised crime, corruption and money laundering/financing of terrorism since 1972, and has published widely on these subjects as well as editing major journals. Current posts include President, US National White-Collar Crime Research Consortium; Member, European Commission Group of Experts on Corruption; Member, Organised Crime Council, World Economic Forum; Member, Peer Review College, Economic and Social Research Council and UK Statistics Authority Crime Statistics Advisory Committee; and Member, Economics and Resource Analysis Unit Advisory Panels on Security and Civil Liberties and on Crime and Policing, Home Office.
David McNair is Director of Transparency and Accountability at the ONE campaign. He has previously worked for the British Red Cross, Christian Aid and Save the Children UK where he was Head of Growth, Equity and Sustainable Livelihoods. David led Christian Aid's work on tax and development, and played a key role in raising the profile of this work. David has served as a trustee for Tax Justice Network, Jubilee Debt Campaign (UK), and Debt and Development Coalition Ireland. He was also an active member of the OECD's Informal Task Force on Tax and Development.
Joseph (Jody) Myers is Vice President of BSA/AML Risk Assessment at Western Union. Previously, he was assistant general counsel and head of the Financial Integrity Group in the IMF’s Legal Department, overseeing assessments and technical assistance, providing specialized support to IMF surveillance missions and representing the organization on the G-20 Anti-Corruption Working Group. Prior to joining the Fund in 2005, he worked on financial crime, corruption and terrorism issues for the United States Department of the Treasury as senior advisor to the Under Secretary, as a director at the National Security Council, and in private law practice.
Rav Padda is Risk and Compliance Manager – MLRO: UK and Europe for WorldRemit, an online money transfer service which is available in 50 countries and offers transfers to more than 110 destinations across Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia and the Americas. Rav was previously Head of Fraud, Risk Management and Payments at NetPlay TV where he created, directed and managed the department. Before that, Rav was European Fraud and Security Representative for Neteller Ltd.
Peter Reuter is Professor in the School of Public Policy and in the Department of Criminology at the University of Maryland. He is Director of the Program on the Economics of Crime and Justice Policy at the University and also Senior Economist at RAND. He founded and directed RAND’s Drug Policy Research Center from 1989-1993. The Center is a multi-disciplinary research program begun in 1989 with funding from a number of foundations. His early research focused on the organization of illegal markets and resulted in the publication of Disorganized Crime: The Economics of the Visible Hand (MIT Press, 1983), which won the Leslie Wilkins award as most outstanding book of the year in criminology and criminal justice. Since 1985 most of Peter’s research has dealt with alternative approaches to controlling drug problems, both in the United States and Western Europe. In recent years he has also been publishing on money laundering control and on the flows of illicit funds from developing nations.
Beth Schwanke is the senior policy counsel at CGD, where she leads the Center’s engagement with the development policy community. Before joining CGD, she was an associate in the Federal Law and Policy group at the law firm DLA Piper and previously the legislative counsel for Freedom Now. Schwanke earned her BA with honors in English from Wellesley College and her JD with honors from University of Michigan Law School, where she was an associate and contributing editor of the Michigan Law Review.
Amit Sharma is co-founder of Empowerment Capital, an investment management and advisory company focusing on income-generative, scalable social enterprise and assisting corporate entities in the engagement of and support to market-viable anti-poverty and development initiatives. Amit also works as an Executive Director to RANE—Risk Assistance Network and Exchange—an information services company created to help enterprises and individuals manage complex risk more effectively through collaboration. Previously, he served as the Deputy Director and Head of Operations and Strategy for Command Global Services (CGS), where he managed the investigation, intervention and recovery of stolen sovereign assets, and the strengthening of financial integrity and regulatory controls. Prior to joining CGS, Sharma worked as the Chief of Staff for Mitsubishi UFJ Securities (USA), Inc. the American investment banking and brokerage unit of Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group, and as Head of Project Management for the firm’s International Business Unit. Amit formerly worked at the U.S. Department of the Treasury, first serving as a Senior Advisor in the Department's newly formed Office of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence. His global portfolio included the development and execution of anti-money laundering/counter-terrorist financing strategies. He also served as the Chief of Staff to the Treasury’s Deputy Secretary, and Advisor to the senior Treasury team. He is a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and teaches on issues related to international security policy, counter-terrorism finance, risk, and social venture development at the Monterey Institute of International Studies and Georgetown University.
Gaiv Tata is the Director of Growth Solutions for Development LLC. The firm’s objective is to further the financial and private sector development agenda in developing countries by supporting Governments, private sector firms, international financial institutions and other development thought leaders. Gaiv has thirty years of experience, including a distinguished career in international development at the World Bank. Between July 2011 and June 2014, he was Director for Financial and Private Sector Development in the Sub-Saharan Africa Region as well as the Director for the Global Practice on Financial Inclusion and Infrastructure at the World Bank. He has broad experience, having been responsible for operational, analytical and fund raising activities. He has led finance and private sector development policy dialogues and country strategy formulation, provided implementation support for the Bank’s activities in Uganda through a field-based assignment, was part of the team that prepared the 2005 World Development Report on improving the investment climate; and managed two of the most successful rounds of fund raising for the International Development Association, the World Bank’s fund for the poorest.
CGD Secretariat
Vijaya Ramachandran is a senior fellow at the Center for Global Development. As well as her work on illicit financial flows, she works on private-sector development, food security, humanitarian assistance, and development interventions in fragile states. Most recently, she has published on service performance guarantees for Africa and coauthored an essay titled "Development as Diffusion: Manufacturing Productivity and Africa's Missing Middle," to be published in the Oxford Handbook on Economics and Africa. Currently, she is looking at the impact of regulatory reform on investment, and at better ways to deliver humanitarian assistance in the aftermath of natural disasters. Prior to joining CGD, Vijaya served on the faculty at Georgetown University and also worked in the Africa Private Sector Group of the World Bank and in the Executive Office of the Secretary-General of the United Nations. Vijaya earned her BA magna cum laude, MA and PhD in Business Economics from Harvard University.
Matt Collin is a research fellow at the Center for Global Development. Beyond his work on illicit financial flows, his other research currently focuses on the adoption and impact of property rights in developing countries as well as the role of property rights in large scale land consolidation. His recent work includes investigating the impact of ethnic sorting on formalisation behaviour, the effort of neighbour decisions on land title adoption, and the impact of conditional subsidies on gender equity in land ownership. Ongoing projects include both a field experiment to measure the impact of formal land titling in Tanzania and a long term evaluation of the impact of temporary titles on credit access. Matt holds a D.Phil in Economics from the University of Oxford, and previously worked as an ODI Fellow in the Ministry of Finance, Malawi.
Matt Juden is a research assistant at the Center for Global Development, where he works on research topics including illicit financial flows and large-scale land acquisitions. Other research interests include social protection, realist evaluation and external validity for randomised controlled trials. He holds an MA in Philosophy from Cambridge University and an MSc in Research for International Development from the School of Oriental and African Studies.