Creating a Safety Net for Micro and Small Enterprises: A Call to Action to Close Consumer Protection Gaps

Jayshree Venkatesan is Senior Vice President and Head of Partnership Development at Accion, where she serves on the organization’s leadership team and leads its global partnership and resource mobilization strategy.

Previously, as Vice President of Consumer Protection and Strategic Industry Engagement at Accion’s Center for Financial Inclusion, Jayshree led the development and execution of CFI’s consumer protection research and broader partnership strategy, contributing significantly to their global portfolio. She led two of the industry’s premier global convenings: Financial Inclusion Week, one of the largest virtual events dedicated to financial inclusion, bringing together more than 3,000 participants from over 140 countries in 2024, and the Responsible Finance Forum, which convenes leaders from financial institutions, technology companies, governments, investors, and development organizations alongside the G20 Global Partnership for Financial Inclusion to advance responsible finance and consumer protection.

With more than 20 years of experience, Jayshree has built a career spanning investments, strategy, partnerships and public policy. Before joining Accion, she spent nearly a decade advising leading international organizations, including CGAP, the World Bank, JICA, and ITAD, on customer-centered financial services, digital innovation, and inclusive business models across emerging markets. Earlier in her career, Jayshree was a member of the founding leadership team at IFMR (now Dvara Trust), where she led the development of India’s first mezzanine investment fund for microfinance, pioneering an innovative financing structure that evolved into an alternative investment fund. She began her career at ICICI Bank.

Beyond Accion, Jayshree contributes to the advancement of responsible finance and digital inclusion through several global advisory roles. She serves on the Consumers International Digital Finance Advisory Council, the Advisory Board for the GSMA Mobile Money Certification program, and the Advisory Council of the Pranava Institute’s Youth Digital Cultures Lab (YDCL), helping shape industry standards and emerging leadership in digital financial services. From 2021 to 2026, she served as Senior Policy Fellow at the Leir Institute at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, where she focused on expanding financial inclusion for migrants, refugees, and other vulnerable populations. She also served as an adjunct faculty member at the Fletcher School, teaching decision analysis for business.

Jayshree is a recipient of the Chevening Fellowship for Leadership from the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office, completed at King’s College, London. She earned an MA in International Relations from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, an MBA from the Management Development Institute in Gurgaon, and an undergraduate degree in Mathematics from Mumbai University

Colin presently serves as CFI’s Research Manager. He has a background in project design, monitoring and evaluation, and social performance management. He supports research projects as well as the implementation of data collection, management, review, and presentation; drafting blog posts and reports; planning events and workshops, among other things.

Colin previously worked as the social performance manager at Small Enterprise Foundation, the largest MFI in South Africa, where he led a team responsible for gathering and analyzing insights on client progress, satisfaction, and challenges. He also reviewed and developed the organization’s social performance practices, in addition to working on the design, monitoring, and evaluation of financial education and savings projects.

Prior to that, Colin spent time developing M&E tools for BancoSol in Bolivia, consulted with nonprofits and family philanthropic foundations in the DC area to strengthen internal operations, and was an intern on the Bankers without Borders team at Grameen Foundation.

Colin has a master’s degree in social enterprise from American University: School of International Service and a bachelor’s degree in anthropology from Sewanee.