Hugh Allen has worked in development since 1970, focusing for most of the last fifteen years on microfinance and technology-focused market development activities. For thirteen years, he worked for CARE and was its chief technical advisor for small economic activity development in Africa. It was during this time that he first came across the Village Saving and Lending Association (VSLA) model and realized its potential.

These days, he works exclusively to promote its adoption by multi-sectoral development agencies and southern NGOs. He is on the faculty of University of New Hampshire’s Sustainable Microenterprise and Development Program and the Boulder Microfinance Training program. He is also the co-facilitator of the SEEP working group on savings-led financial services. He has published books with ITDG on technology-related activities and savings-led financial services.

Ann Gordon is a Senior Consultant and Project Manager at MEDA (Mennonite Economic Development Associates). She has an extensive background in leadership and rural development in the entrepreneurial, non-profit, and government sectors. Along with a master's degree in Capacity Development and Extension from the University of Guelph, Ann also holds a BSc. from the University of Western Ontario and is a Canadian Nuffield Scholar. She has over eighteen years of experience in project-based management—including research, design, implementation, and evaluation across various agriculture, agri-food, and health-related value chains—which has taken her across North America and the world. Her role at MEDA has included the management of market development projects and activities in Afghanistan, Tanzania, and Pakistan, as well as a number of consultancies in other countries where MEDA is active. Some of Ann’s latest contributions to the sector can be found in the area of value chain training and mentoring, as well as a recent publication by the World Bank on understanding gender and value chains in Afghanistan.

William (Bill) Maddocks is the coordinator of the Sustainable Microenterprise and Development Program (SMDP) at the University of New Hampshire’s Carsey Institute. The SMDP provides training workshops for development finance professionals in Ghana, Togo, Tanzania and New Hampshire. In 2011, Bill was the lead organizer for the Arusha Savings Groups Summit, the first global gathering of the savings groups movement. As a faculty member of the Carsey Institute’s Masters in Development Policy and Practice program, he teaches a course on leadership, collaboration, and communication.

For seven years, Bill was the director of the Microenterprise and Development Institute at the School of Community Economic Development at Southern New Hampshire University and operated training workshops in Africa and the United States. He has also worked as the executive director and cofounder of the Community Economic Development Center of Southeastern Massachusetts, the affiliate coordinator for Working Capital peer micro lending program, and the director of development and energy conservation for People Acting in Community Endeavors in New Bedford, Massachusetts. As a trainer and facilitator, his diverse clients include municipalities, community colleges, national and state level microenterprise, and community development finance organizations. Bill holds a master's degree in community economic development from New Hampshire College and a bachelor's degree from Southeastern Massachusetts University.

Paul Rippey is a microfinance specialist with twenty years of experience in Africa, with particular skills and experience at the intersection of energy, microfinance, and climate change. He has managed microfinance institutions in Burkina Faso and Guinea (Conakry) and is the co-founder of Association Al Amana in Morocco, which over ten years ago became the largest MFI in North Africa, with a portfolio of $230,000,000 and 400,000 customers.

From 2002 to 2007, he managed DFID's Financial Sector Deepening Project in Uganda, rolling out programs of consumer education, savings groups, a “consolidation challenge fund,” an “LED Challenge,” and massive demand and supply side studies.

Since 2007, he has been active as a consultant working both with financial providers and with clean energy distributors to find synergies that will allow pro-poor finance to help people get more, cleaner, and better energy. He has been working with private sector distributors of solar lamps in Uganda and Mali and has trained savings group promoters in India, Pakistan, and Mozambique.

Paul is the chief consultant to ACCION's Energy Links Project and over the last three years has also worked with the Aga Khan Foundation, the MasterCard Foundation, the Financial Sector Deepening Trust in Kenya, CARE, and Plan International. He is the author of a Focus Note for CGAP on microfinance and climate change, as well as a chapter in What's Wrong with Microfinance, edited by Thomas Dichter and Malcolm Harper.

Paul has also been trained by former American vice president Al Gore and has presented the climate change presentation at the heart of the film An Inconvenient Truth in eight countries. He hosts a series of podcasts available on iTunes (Energy Links Podcast Series) and runs an independent blog on alternative microfinance at http://savings-revolution.org.

Richard Pelrine holds degrees from the University of Massachusetts in anthropology and agricultural economics and from the Institute of Social Studies in rural policy and project planning. He completed doctoral coursework at the Ohio State University in rural finance and is currently a doctoral candidate at the University of Stellenbosch with the faculty of agricultural economics. He has consulted for over twenty years in Africa and has both taught and published in the fields of rural finance and rural development. Richard has worked as a senior technical advisor on multiple long-term agribusiness finance programs in Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania, and Uganda and has consulted directly with financial institutions on value chain financing and agribusiness finance product development in Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Namibia, Rwanda, South Africa, Tanzania, and Uganda. Beyond consulting, Richard has been a commercial farmer, a coffee and grain trader, and the CEO of an agribusiness loan guarantee company. He is an owner and director of INSPIRED International, a firm specializing in agribusiness finance, since founding the firm in 2007.