The Collaborative is the product of a growing community of stakeholders interested in finance for small and growing businesses in frontier and emerging markets.
Nicholas Colloff
Nicholas is the executive director of the Argidius Foundation, a family foundation focused on supporting enterprise development in Africa and Latin America as an approach to poverty reduction and inclusive growth. A serial social entrepreneur, he has helped found a financial inclusion support foundation, two micro-finance banks in Eastern Europe, the international mental health NGO, Basic Needs, and the Prison Phoenix Trust that teaches yoga and meditation to staff and inmates of UK prisons. He has also worked at the international NGO, Oxfam GB, both as their country director in Russia and as their director of strategy and innovation.
Aun Rahman
Aun is a Global Specialist in Early-stage Finance at the World Bank Group, where he specializes in developing innovative financing mechanisms to increase capital flows to early-stage entrepreneurs in emerging and frontier markets. His current areas of focus include venture capital, seed funds, angel investing, and investment readiness programs. Prior to the World Bank, Aun was the founding Country Director/CEO of Acumen Fund Pakistan from 2006-2012. Under his leadership, Acumen Pakistan built the country's first impact investment portfolio, investing in pioneering start-ups and early-stage companies serving under-served markets in the country.
Urmi Sengupta
Urmi is an Impact Investment Program Officer at the MacArthur Foundation working on international impact investments and grantmaking in support of impact investing field building efforts. She is also part of the On Nigeria program strategy team. Urmi previously worked at CapitalPlus Exchange, where she led and managed relationships with small business finance and microfinance institutions. Her work included launching and running the first global community network for emerging market small business banks, an initiative that is now part of the G20 Global Partnership for Financial Inclusion (GPFI) SME Finance Forum managed by the International Finance Corporation.
LIz Wilson
Liz is the deputy CEO of the Small Foundation. She has been contributing to Small Foundation’s mission since 2013 and is based in London. Her work focuses on catalysing strategic networks for rural business ecosystem-level change and draws on her professional experience as a diplomat, policy advocate, institutional donor and international development worker in sub-Saharan Africa, Europe and China.
CFF is a registered 501(c)(3) non-profit organization incorporated in the state of Delaware, United States.
