Jake is the Director of the Digital Financial Services Innovation Lab (DFS Lab) housed at Caribou Digital. The DFSLab engages in seed stage investing and rapid prototyping of internally-generated ideas to create the breakthrough fintech innovations that will profitably bring households in developing countries from the cash economy into the digital financial realm.

Formerly Jake was Deputy Director of Research and Emerging Technologies within the Financial Services for the Poor Team at the Gates Foundation where his team helped create the global data architecture for tracking financial inclusion, fund the critical research to inform the field, and create high potential emerging technologies to power new financial inclusion models.  Prior to joining the foundation, he spent time as an Economist with the Consultative Group to Assist the Poor (CGAP) within the World Bank and in two start-ups in the field of cryptography.

Jake is a published researcher and author and holds a PhD in Economics from UC Santa Cruz and a BS in Physics from MIT. After MIT, he spent two years in Zambia as a fisheries extension agent with the US Peace Corps. Jake has also worked as a brand analyst for a major advertising firm and, throughout his youth, a salmon fisherman in Alaska.

You can see some of his research on his SSRN Author page.

Will Croft is Director of Data Analysis at Caribou Digital.

Will is currently building a platform that aims to solve the problem of access to reliable and consistent behavioural data across consumers’ digital lives.

Previously, Will was a Senior Director at GSMA, where he established the GSMA Intelligence initative and subsequently led its data and product strategy for ten years. Prior to GSMA, Will worked for Ovum, covering the mobile sector.

Will holds a BSc (Hons) in Physics from the University of Bath and is currently based in London.

David is a Senior Director at Caribou Digital.

David has been an entrepreneurial leader and innovator throughout his career. His consistent focus on how technology can be harnessed to power creative business models has earned him and his teams patents and prestigious awards, including Best Use of Mobile for Social and Economic Development at the Mobile World Congress. He is passionate about bringing products and services to hard to reach populations, generating social and economic impact.

Over the course of the past year, David led Grameen Foundation as the Interim CEO and Deputy CEO. He previously served as executive vice president for global programs, where he led a team developing innovative solutions in financial services, agriculture and health to address some of the most persistent problems facing underserved people. These solutions, enabled by digital technologies, have proven that market inefficiencies and failures can be overcome by working directly with customers to develop impactful and sustainable business models.

Previously, at Microsoft, David designed pioneering, technology-enabled business models to deliver affordable products to people in emerging markets. At McKinsey & Company, he worked extensively in the telecommunications and consumer goods sectors, with a focus on creating business strategies tailored to the needs of consumers and businesses in developing countries. He also worked with the McKinsey Global Institute, leading research to understand drivers of business productivity and competitiveness in Brazil. Earlier in his career, he conducted economic analyses and evaluated public policy with the White House Council of Economic Advisers and Resources for the Future.

Chris Locke is the Founder of Caribou Digital. He’s responsible for guiding the principles and the evolution of the company, and he buys the wine and books the company surfing retreats.

Previously, Chris was the Managing Director of GSMA Mobile for Development. GSMA Mobile for Development works with the mobile industry globally to build services that have a development impact for the poorest people in the world.  He developed the department from a small team of 12 people to 75 people, 8 projects, $70m in funding and one of the world-leading ICT4D teams.

Before that, Chris spent 15 years working in senior roles within the mobile and internet industries, for companies such as the Virgin Group, Three, AOL and T-Mobile.

Previous to his industry career he was the Xerox Lecturer in Electronic Communication and Publishing at University College London, and has maintained strong links to the research community, including being the editor of “Thumbculture: The Meaning of Mobile Phones in Society”, an anthology of research considering the global social effect of mobile technology.

Chris is a Visiting Fellow at the University of California, San Diego and the Digital World Research Centre at the University of Surrey. Chris is based in Farnham, Surrey in England and on seat 26a on a flight somewhere.

Marissa Drouillard is Senior Director, Investment Advisory at Caribou Digital.

Marissa is currently developing a platform to channel funding and support to catalyse the growth of inclusive digital businesses and the next generation of technology leaders in Africa, in partnership with Goodwell Investments.

She regularly advises mobile industry and international development organizations on digital entrepreneurship topics, particularly entrepreneurship ecosystem development in emerging markets and recently developed a methodology for country-level ecosystem diagnostics for the World Bank.

Previous to working in international development, Marissa worked for 11 years as a business and technology consultant with Accenture, specializing in predictive analytics (forecasting, planning, and replenishment modelling) within the Retail and Consumer Goods industries.

Marissa has an MBA and a Certificate in Global Business from the Haas School of Business and a BSc from the College of Chemistry, all from the University of California at Berkeley, and an MSc in Public Policy with merit from the University of London, SOAS. She currently splits time between Cape Town, South Africa and Lake Tahoe, California.

Kishor Nagula joins Caribou Digital with over 10 years of professional experience advising private, NGO’s and government clients in the financial and telecom sectors. He started his career as a management consultant at Booz Allen Hamilton while working on large scale transformations for multinational corporations and delivering cost cutting strategies for domestic and international clients. He then transitioned to working at Dalberg Global Development advisors where he worked on a variety of international projects and advised NGO’s, multilateral organizations and start-ups with their technology strategy in emerging markets.

Most recently, Kishor worked at the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and joined the Digital Development team, where he supported the team’s work in expanding digital access across the Agency’s target countries.

Kishor earned his B.A in Economics at the College of William and Mary, his M.A in International Economics/International Relations at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) and his M.B.A from the Fuqua School of Business at Duke University.

Jonathan Donner is Senior Director, Research at Caribou Digital. For over a decade, Jonathan has published extensively on the growth in mobile telephony in the developing world, focusing on its implications for socio-economic development and inclusion in the information society. His new book, After Access: Mobile Internet in the Developing World was published by the MIT Press in November 2015).  His projects have covered topics such as Microenterprise Development, Mobile Banking, Citizen Journalism, Mobile Health, and Youth and New Media.

Prior to joining Caribou Digital, Jonathan was a researcher in the Technology for Emerging Markets Group at Microsoft Research, a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow at the Earth Institute at Columbia University, and a consultant with Monitor Company and the OTF Group in Boston, MA.

Jonathan is co-author with Richard Ling of Mobile Communication (Polity, 2009), and co-editor with Patricia Mechael of mHealth in Practice: Mobile Technology for Health Promotion in the Developing World (Bloomsbury Academic, 2012). His research also appears in the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, The Information Society, Information Technologies and International Development, The Journal of International Development, and Innovations: Technology, Governance, Globalization.

Jonathan’s Ph.D. is from Stanford University in Communication Research. Further details on his research can be found at www.jonathandonner.com, and on Twitter as @jcdonner.

Tim is Senior Director of Operations at Caribou Digital with a focus on our delivery work in building emerging market digital economies, most recently leading a major grant programme delivering satellite connectivity in Kenya and Nigeria, including a major research component across other emerging countries. Before Caribou, Tim was in GSMA’s Mobile for Development area as Operations Director, and as interim Managing Director, working with global donor organisations and the mobile industry to build mobile services to improve access and content to help improve the lives of the poorest people in the world.

In previous roles, Tim was a Director in the UK Government’s Home Office and worked for a major mobile operator, for one of the top 5 consulting firms and also for a global IT company delivering programmes across developing ex-USSR countries. Tim started his career as a Weapons Engineer Office in nuclear submarines in the Royal Navy. He has over 25 years’ experience in managing complex programmes across the Telecoms, Government, Finance and Defence sectors, including many years of international experience. Tim is based in the UK.

Bryan Pon joins Caribou with a background in both research and business. He recently finished his Ph.D. in geography at University of California, Davis, with a research focus on the mobile industry. His publications focus on mobile platforms, firm strategy, and the app economy, exploring how the combination of technological and socioeconomic structures shape value creation and value capture. Bryan has a long-running collaboration in this research with ETLA, the Finnish Organization for Economic Development, and BRIE, the Berkeley Roundtable on the International Economy.

Prior to Caribou, Bryan spent 12 years working as an independent consultant, primarily in the energy sector, and was most recently an Emerging Venture Analyst for the UC Davis Program for International Energy Technologies. Bryan earned a Master’s of Science in Community Development, also at UC Davis, with research on affordable solar lighting in emerging markets.

Bryan has a background in both digital and physical product design, and has taught user-centered design workshops to a wide range of audiences. His experience includes UI/UX for online applications as well as hardware design of small-scale solar technology products. He has co-founded several start-ups around energy and education, and lives in San Jose, California.

Savita Bailur is a researcher with around fifteen years of experience in ICTs and development. Her expertise is qualitative research (interviews, focus groups and analysing these through story-telling and narrative analysis) on ICTs and governance issues – whether through big and open data, or community radio, mobile internet and telecentres – and what that means for “ordinary citizens” – us. She has worked with organisations including the World Wide Web Foundation, Aptivate, mySociety, the World Bank (Global Governance Practice in DC), Microsoft Research (India), Commonwealth Secretariat, USAID (Honduras) and Panos. She speaks fluent Hindi and Spanish and conversational French, has lived in India and Honduras and worked with countries across Asia, Africa and Latin America.

Savita is an External Lecturer in the Media and Communications Department at LSE, co-convening and teaching the MSc course on ICT policies for Society and Development. She has been teaching at LSE and been Assistant Examiner for the University of London International Programme for the past ten years.  She was previously co-Programme Director for the MSc Management in Information Systems: Development and Change at the University of Manchester and Assistant Professor in ICTs and development at the University of Manchester. She holds a PhD and MSc in Information Systems from London School of Economics as well as degrees from the University of London and University of Cambridge.  She was co-author and editor on two World Bank publications: Evaluating Digital Citizen Engagement: A Practical Guide (2016) and Closing the Feedback Loop: Can Technology Bridge the Accountability Gap (2014), and has several other publications, including in Government Information Quarterly, Information Technology and International Development, Gender, Technology and Development and multiple conferences.

Emrys Schoemaker is a researcher and strategist with a background in international development programming. Emrys’ research interests are on the use of social media in resource constrained environments, and the social implications of their use. Emrys is currently writing up a PhD thesis at the London School of Economics in International Development that looks at the relationship between mobile social media use and identity, specifically religious and gender identity in Pakistan. He is particularly interested in how technology design and affordances interact with cultural norms and values to generate new social practices.

Emrys has over a decade of experience in communications for international development programming as the Director for Innovation and Technology at iMedia Associates, a development communications consultancy, and as a consultant to institutions including the British Government’s Department for International Development, United Nations and World Bank.

Emrys’ work has focused on the use of communications, particularly new technologies, in social change processes that include peacebuilding, governance, education and health. Emrys has a Masters in Conflict Management from the Department of Peace Studies, Bradford University.

Emrys has been involved in community development initiatives, co-founded startups that provide software solutions to development organisations and lives in London, United Kingdom. He rides a Brompton and can be found on Twitter and Linkedin.

Jo Tofts is based in Farnham, Surrey, in the UK, and looks after all the company’s invoicing, banking, budgeting and general accounting needs.

In previous roles, Jo was Financial Controller for The Book People Ltd – an online, mail order and field based independent bookseller, and prior to that was Group Management Accountant for Thorn Ltd, based in their HQ reporting to private equity fund owners. Even further back Jo was an auditor and became a Chartered Certified Accountant in a small accountancy practice giving her a large variety of hands on experience.

Jo has a BA in Human Geography from the University of Newcastle Upon Tyne which feeds her interest in all things Caribou Digital, and used to teach English to small children and businessmen and women in Thailand. In her free time Jo likes to sew, loves dance fitness classes and wittertainment, and spends as much time as possible with her husband, daughter and two cats.

David Taverner is a Senior Director at Caribou Digital. David is currently developing a Digital Financial Services Innovation Lab that will support innovation to address pain points for digital financial services to profitably serve the world’s poor. This programme is in partnership with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

David was previously conducting an analysis of emerging business models and technologies to improve access to mobile and Internet in emerging markets. David also led the team developing a website to promote the use of satellite applications in emerging markets.

David previously worked at GSMA as a Senior Director and led the following GSMA initiatives: Green Power for Mobile, Mobile for Development Utilities, Mobile for Development Impact, GSMA Intelligence and Digital Inclusion. David started his career as a management consultant at Accenture.

David has a 1st class BSc in Science and Management from Leeds University.

Stephen is the Strategy and Innovation Manager for our Digital Financial Services Lab.

Stephen joins Caribou Digital with experience in advising private, NGO, and non-profit clients with their technology strategies. Stephen is currently helping to develop a Digital Financial Services Innovation Lab that aims to support breakthrough innovations that profitably address pain points for Digital Financial Services delivery to low-income consumers.

Previously, Stephen worked with the Financial Services for the Poor team at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation providing research and grant making strategy for the team’s technology innovation portfolio. More recently, Stephen was a consultant to UNICEF’s Innovation Unit where he analyzed opportunities and potential partnerships around satellite technologies in multiple countries. Stephen started his career with LitiNomics, an economic consulting firm in Silicon Valley supporting the intellectual property strategies of clients in the technology, telecommunications, and healthcare sectors.

Stephen earned his MBA from the Haas School of Business and his BA in Economics and International Political Economy, both from the University of California at Berkeley.

Ben Lyon is the Entrepreneur in Residence for Caribou Digital’s Digital Financial Services (DFS) Innovation Lab. He is responsible for sourcing and supporting innovative financial technology startups throughout South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa, and in some cases building them from scratch.

Prior to joining Caribou Digital, Ben co-founded Kopo Kopo, the first merchant aggregator and merchant cash advance provider in the mobile money industry, which now serves thousands of merchants throughout East Africa. Ben has international experience in over 30 countries and has a passion for payments and financial services.