Chairman of the Supervisory Board
Christian Andersen
Chief Executive Officer, BOPA
Christian has more than 15 years experience in business management in Asia and has been involved in microfinance since 2005.
He has personally visited more than 60 MFIs in Asia and Latin America in connection with searching for suitable partners for Base of Pyramid Asia (BOPA), which Christian co-founded in 2013. BOPA is a Holding company that focus on equity investment in smaller and early stage microfinance institutions in Asia.
Christian holds a Master in Business Administration (MBA) from IMD, Swizerland and is a World Bank / Asian Development Bank certified Microfinance Trainer of Trainers (MFTOT). He has further attended microfinance training courses at CGAP, BRAC and Boulder Institute of Microfinance.
Board Members
Senad Sinanovic
Director of “Partner microcredit foundation”, Partner Microcredit Foundation
Senad Sinanović is the director of Partner Microcredit Foundation (Partner MKF) from Bosnia and Herzegovina and has 28 years of experience in the microfinance sector.
He was member of several Board of Directors among other, the AFK Kosovo Board of Directors and Association of Microfinance Institutions (AMFI).
Marco de Natale
Network Finance Director, VisionFund/World Vision
Marco has over 25 years of experience in investment banking and impact finance, across many geographies. He’s currently Network Finance Director for the international microfinance network VisionFund, responsible for the financial oversight of the VisionFund global network.
Previously, he was Sector Leader (Strategic Finance / Fund Management) at global impact advisory firm NIRAS, and Manager (Strategic Finance) at LFS Advisory, in Berlin.
Earlier experiences include being CEO & Co-Founder of a private investment firm focused on the CIS region, as well as CEO and CFO of leading microfinance institutions in Azerbaijan and Russia, and Regional Manager at BlueOrchard Finance, in Geneva. Marco started its career working for 10 years on senior capital markets roles with Barclays Capital, Credit Suisse & Merrill Lynch, in the City of London.
Marco holds a Master from Stanford University, a BA from Bocconi University, and is a graduate of the Stonier ABA School of Banking (University of Pennsylvania/Wharton) & Oxford University Fintech Programmes.
Don Ginsel
Founder & CEO, Leodex
Don is an experienced supervisor and strategic advisor to many business leaders at all levels. His expertise covers digitization and use of technologies like AI, with a focus on financial & business services. His network in fintech spans the globe and he is followed by over 15.000 people for his views on developments in the industry, heard on various stages and podcast. He is an entrepreneur at heart and always keen to learn about new projects, technologies, and ventures. He is very passionate about financial well-being and inclusion and hence his commitment to microfinance. He is based in Amsterdam, the Netherlands and loves to do various sports in his free time and is a board member at one of the local football clubs to support girls’ football.
Jana Chmelnizki Kadian
Founder of the IDG Hub for Financial Inclusion
Jana is a development finance executive with a 20-year career leading regulated microfinance institutions (MFIs) and banks across frontier economies. She has served as CEO of ADVANS MFI in Myanmar, CEO of FINCA in Tajikistan and Malawi, COO of FINCA in Kyrgyzstan, and Deputy Regional Director for Operations for FINCA Latin America.
Passionate about the transformative impact of mission-driven institutions, she is dedicated to cultivating resilient and adaptive organizations. Her strategy places a strong emphasis on developing local talent and leadership pipelines, ensuring growth from within.
Adept at crisis management, Jana has successfully navigated multiple institutions through severe economic and social disruptions. Her leadership philosophy places the needs of customers at the forefront, guiding her in the development of needs-based products and solutions. A firm believer in leveraging technology for operational efficiency, she has overseen significant digitalization of operational and credit processes in her previous roles.
Jana is also the founder of the IDG Hub for Financial Inclusion (IDG4FI), an initiative that applies the Inner Development Goals framework to inclusive finance. Through this work, she focuses on building systemic leadership capabilities in financial institutions and development organizations—supporting leaders and teams to align culture, strategy, and impact in service of more resilient, human-centered financial systems.
Talgat Salikhov
Independent BoD member of JSC Teniz Capital Investment Banking
Talgat Salikhov is an investment and finance professional with more than 10 years of relevant experience and a wide network in the financial sector, among quasi-state financial institutions and in general business community. Until recently he has been a partner at an investment and financial services group, where he overviewed a significant part of principal investment and asset & principal investment portfolio management activities of the group. Currently, Talgat is involved in several investment and advisory initiatives in Kazakhstan, focusing on corporate finance, asset management, and strategic development of portfolio companies.
An engineer by education with BSc from Nottingham University and MSc from Imperial College London, Talgat worked at Mott Macdonald, a global leading engineering consultancy, in its London headquarters as well as in various engineering companies in Kazakhstan.
His finance career started at PwC, a global consulting firm, where he executed and managed business valuation, due diligence, debt advisory and capital investment projects, working in PwC’s Kazakhstan and Russia offices. His tenure also includes working for an investment bank where he dealt with financial advisory and merchant banking transactions.
Talgat has been a director in a number of private entities and currently is an Independent BoD member of JSC Teniz Capital Investment Banking, a leading investment banking firm in Kazakhstan. Talgat is a chair of Risk Management Committee at ACF.
Sevara Siradjeva
Product Development, EPAM Systems
Sevara Siradjeva is a highly skilled professional with over 12 years of experience in digitization and innovative product development within the tech industry. She holds an MBA in Finance and a bachelor’s degree in Business Computing from prestigious educational institutions in the United Kingdom.
Throughout her career, Sevara has successfully launched technological products in global markets, including the USA, the UK, the United Arab Emirates, Russia, Georgia, and Uzbekistan. Her unique ability to adapt to diverse market conditions has played a crucial role in achieving outstanding results. Sevara has gained a broad understanding of the industry through professional internships at leading technology companies in Silicon Valley, such as Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, Microsoft, Mozilla, Oracle, and Optimizely. This experience has complemented her skills and enriched her professional approach.
Beyond her exceptional accomplishments in the professional sphere, Sevara actively supports initiatives aimed at attracting women and girls to STEM fields. She is particularly interested in expanding opportunities in Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan, where she strives to create favorable conditions for the development of technological and innovative initiatives.