Faculty profiles
Training team Gavin Anderson is an Associate Director of the Springfield Centre. Throughout his 17-year career Gavin has been an important innovator in business services, having earlier played a key role in research on SMEs' use of services in Uganda and on 'hidden' services embedded within commercial relationships in Asia. A key focus for Gavin is developing media-based business services, especially radio programmes, as commercial services that can reach the smallest and most rural businesses and which can act as an effective advocate in the interests of the poor. Having managed a major project in Uganda for several years he is now based in Ullapool in the Scottish Highlands and is supporting projects in Africa and Asia to make commercial media work more effectively for the poor. Marshall Bear has been closely involved in the design of the training programme, and is an instructor for the core skills sessions. Marshall has worked in international development for 30 years as a manager, microenterprise specialist, trainer and researcher. He has researched various topics including how market development approaches create and sustain value for industry and pro-poor enterprise competitiveness. Currently an independent consultant based in Albuquerque, New Mexico, Marshall brings knowledge of enterprise development programmes in Asia and Africa, practitioner skills in value chain analysis and in organisational strategic planning and considerable experience in curriculum design and training delivery. David Elliott is a Director of the Springfield Centre. He has extensive experience in private sector development gained in more than 20 countries working with a range of organisations including DFID, SDC, IRBD, IADB and the EU. David was the lead manager of DFID’s Enterprise Development Innovation Fund, focusing on action research into effective approaches for private sector development and was on a DFID advisory panel reviewing their £17m Business Linkages Challenge Fund. Since 2004, David has been retained as a lead technical adviser to the Employment & Income Division of SDC, and was recently retained as a lead technical adviser to AusAID Headquarters on rural enterprise development policy and strategy. Prior to joining Springfield, David worked in a leading public economic regeneration agency in London; as resident adviser to the Northern Cape Department of Economic Affairs & Tourism in South Africa, and several years with a major UK international economics consultancy. Michael Field is a Senior Private Sector Development Advisor with ACDI-VOCA and is currently the Senior Technical Advisor on a large USAID-funded value chain project in Ghana called ADVANCE. He has over 18 years of experience specialising in providing technical leadership in designing, assessing, and implementing market-based private sector development programmes. In Ghana, Mike is advising project management and staff on how to take a systems-based facilitation approach to value chain development. Previous to his work in Ghana, he was the Chief of Party on a USAID-funded value chain competitiveness and education project in Liberia that worked on bridging the relief to development transition. He also designed and managed a large systems-based value chain project in Zambia. Before going to Zambia, he played a key role in setting learning and research agendas in the field of private sector development through USAID’s Microenterprise Development Office where he served as Senior BDS Advisor. Mike’s private sector experience includes work in the financial services and mortgage industries. He holds an MBA degree. Alan Gibson is a Director of the Programme and a co-founder of the Springfield Centre. With a background in economic and business consultancy, he has played a leading role first in the development of market development approaches to business services and, more recently, in the emergence of market development as an overarching framework in development. From 1996, working with the Committee of Donor of Agencies for SME Development, he played a central role in driving forward the major re-assessment of donor agency interventions that underpinned interest in business services. In his research, training and consultancy work he has been an important influence on the emerging market development approach. In 2008 he was one of the key authors of a set of guides “making markets work for the poor” aimed at agencies and governments and is now an adviser to a number of agencies on how they can take the approach more effectively into their work. Alan has worked in more than 20 countries with a range of organisations including SDC, GTZ, DFID and the World Bank. Matthias Herr joined the Springfield Centre in 2008 and has taken a leading role in applying market systems thinking and practice to the development of value chains and other sectors. Amongst other work, he has been involved recently in developing a case study on the application of the market development approach to the healthcare system in Bangladesh. He has also provided backstopping advice to projects in Serbia, the Caucasus, Nigeria and Nepal. Matt previously worked with the ILO where he led efforts towards formulating a more rigorous approach to value chain development. This involved working directly with their Enterprise for Pro-Poor Growth project in Sri Lanka, where he implemented several value chain initiatives, and more widely, while based in Geneva, worked on the development of operational guides, the design and delivery of training programmes throughout Africa and Asia, and the development of monitoring and evaluation systems for value chain projects. Matt graduated as a political scientist and economist. Rob Hitchins is a Director of the Programme and the Springfield Centre. He has worked on market development in a range of countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America and has conducted research, training and written extensively on the subject. Recent work has included design, evaluation and support of major programmes in East Africa, Nigeria, Bangladesh and Indonesia, focusing on financial and business services, agricultural sectors and the media, and serving as a strategic and technical adviser to a European donor agency. In 2008 he was one of the key authors of a set of guides “making markets work for the poor” aimed at agencies and governments. An economist by training, Rob worked for the accountancy and audit firm KPMG, before setting up his own tourism business in Indonesia, and has experience in the development of tourism-related small enterprises, particularly in rural and conservation areas. Diane Johnson is the Global Economic Development Coordinator for Mercy Corps, a position she took after five years as the Regional Programme Director for the South Asia region. She has worked internationally for over 13 years in senior management positions predominantly in countries experiencing conflict or natural disaster. Diane has focused on recovery and development programming with a focus on agricultural development and access to financial services in countries in Asia, Africa, Europe and the Caribbean. She has worked extensively with cash programming and contributed to the development of case studies on cash transfers in the post-Tsunami period. Diane managed Mercy Corps' post-Katrina programme in New Orleans and previously worked for four years in the U.S. as the Director of a Community Economic Development non-profit in the Lower East Side of New York. She holds two Masters degrees. Alexandra Miehlbradt is an independent consultant with over fifteen years of experience in pro-poor enterprise and market development, particularly in Asia. A leading expert on market assessment, Alexandra has helped a wide range of organisations with market analysis and written several widely-used publications on gathering and using market system information to design market development programmes. Recently, Alexandra has been providing technical leadership in the on-going global effort to improve monitoring, evaluation and impact assessment in private sector development programmes. She has helped a number of organisations develop new monitoring and impact assessment systems, is leading the impact assessment component of a global, Gates Foundation funded programme on urban value chain development, and is the lead technical consultant to the Donor Committee for Enterprise Development on elaborating a global standard for internal impact assessment systems in private sector development projects. Alexandra also has extensive experience as a trainer and facilitator. Prashant Rana has worked in small enterprise development and private sector promotion for 20 years. Since 2007, he has been based in Jakarta, Indonesia where he is Swisscontact’s Deputy Regional Director for South East Asia. As Head of Operations for Indonesia he is playing a leading role in developing Swisscontact's largest country portfolio, with a variety of donors and topics in private sector development. Prashant was formerly in Bangladesh where he managed the multi-donor funded Katalyst project on market development. His previous work includes long-term assignments in Nepal and short-term assignments in Sri Lanka, Vietnam, the Philippines, India and Timor-Leste. He has a Master’s Degree in public policy and public administration from the London School of Economics. Jim Tomecko has worked in enterprise development for more than 25 years throughout Africa and Asia. In the 1980s, he spent seven years with GTZ in Nepal developing an entrepreneurship training package now known as CEFE. In 1987 he moved to Kenya to set up a bankable micro-credit programme for small manufacturers before returning to Asia (Laos) in 1994 to teach entrepreneurship and business management to a private sector suppressed by 20 years of state controls. From 1999 until 2004, he was back in Nepal working on the commercialisation of business services with an emphasis on product development. For more than five years, since 2004, he lead an enterprise competitiveness programme in Thailand using market development as the key strategy to improve the competitiveness of five agro-industry value chains.
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