Tamara Cook and Ignacio Mas

Ignacio Mas is Deputy Director in the Financial Services for the Poor program at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Ignacio has been a Senior Adviser in the Technology Program at CGAP (a resource center for microfinance housed at the World Bank), VP of Marketing and Account Management at interTouch, Director of Global Business Strategy at Vodafone Group, and Senior Manager responsible for telecoms investments in Europe at Intel Capital (Intel Corp’s venture capital arm). Ignacio has been a Visiting Professor of International Business at the Graduate School of Business at the University of Chicago. He holds undergraduate degrees in mathematics and economics from MIT and a PhD in economics from Harvard University.

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Tamara Cook is a Program Officer with the Financial Services for the Poor team within the Global Development Program of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Her work focuses on savings and commercial banks, particularly on scaling up savings services for the poor, leveraging linkages with mobile operators, and getting the economics right for small-balance savings accounts. She manages several grants and program-related investments in these areas. Prior to the foundation, she spent ten years working on microfinance with the Consultative Group to Assist the Poor (CGAP) housed in the World Bank. During her year-long secondment to Equity Bank in Kenya, she worked on strengthening their credit department and reaching out to the international community.  She has also conducted institutional appraisals, provided advisory services to financial institutions, facilitated trainings and workshops, monitored the investment portfolio, worked on aid effectiveness and contributed to several publications. She has an MBA from INSEAD in France and a BA in International Affairs and Development from the George Washington University.