Leveraging Digital Platforms for Women’s Financial Inclusion

Harsha Rodrigues is the Executive Vice President for Strategy at Women’s World Banking, the global nonprofit devoted to giving more low-income women access to the financial tools and resources they require to achieve security and prosperity. She is responsible for leading all of Women’s World Banking’s strategic initiatives including the development and monitoring of the organization’s strategic plan, identifying new business initiatives, and managing the growth of the network. With expertise in the areas of strategy development and implementation, over more than a decade, her work has resulted in increasing Women’s World Banking’s global footprint and furthering the vision toward women’s financial inclusion.

Julie Hogan currently serves as the Vice President, Global Banking Solutions at Diebold Nixdorf. In this role, she is responsible for the company’s global banking portfolio, working directly with sales, software, and hardware R&D to enable solutions that automate, digitize and transform how people bank. Her span of accountability includes product management, pre-sales support, solution architecture, and global solution governance. Prior to this, Hogan led the organization’s global services portfolio for banking and retail with the focus to drive portfolio modernization and new value offerings to achieve efficiency, scale, and, services revenue growth. Hogan serves as the DN ambassador for diversity, equity, and inclusion to enable innovation through diversity of thought, ideas, and creativity where all employees have equal opportunity to thrive.

Jonathan Donner is Senior Director for Research at Caribou Digital. For two decades, Jonathan has conducted groundbreaking research on digital transformation in the Global South. An author of over three dozen scholarly articles, his projects have included Microenterprise Development, Digital Financial Services, Citizen Journalism, Mobile Health, Digital Identity, and Youth & New Media. His latest book, After Access: Inclusion, Development, and a More Mobile Internet was published by the MIT Press in 2015.

Yasmin Bin-Humam works on analyzing excluded segments to more closely examine who remains financially excluded and how financial services might impact their lives. She also serves as a focal point for CGAP’s gender mainstreaming and manages FinEquity, an industry-wide community of practice on women’s financial inclusion convened by CGAP. Most recently, she has co-led CGAP’s exploration of women’s participation in informal online commerce in Myanmar, Bangladesh, and Pakistan.

Sonja Kelly is the global lead for Women’s World Banking research. Through research on the financial sector, policy trends, financial services providers, and end-users, Sonja and her team advocate for women’s financial inclusion. Before joining Women’s World Banking, she advised the U.S. Department of State on strategy for U.S. Embassy engagement in digital finance around the world. She has served as the director of research at the Center for Financial Inclusion at Accion, has held consulting roles at the World Bank and the Consultative Group to Assist the Poor (CGAP), and has worked in microfinance at Opportunity International. Sonja holds a PhD in International Relations from American University where she researched financial inclusion policy and regulation.