Elizabeth (Liz) McGuinness is a financial inclusion professional with over twenty years of experience in inclusive finance, financial capabilities, women’s economic empowerment, agricultural development, and SME development. As senior director of Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning (MEL), she aims to develop and support sound monitoring and evaluation approaches at CFI.

Liz has designed, led, and managed research to support strategy development, product development, learning, results measurement, and program, outcomes, and impact evaluation. Liz has led program evaluations of financial inclusion programs, such as agricultural finance and women’s financial inclusion projects; qualitative field research to assess the risk management strategies of low-income people, to support financial product development; and desk research on the economic resilience of poor people, particularly women.

She has designed M&E systems and provided capacity building and technical assistance in M&E, including in complexity-aware methods. She led a participative process at CFI to develop a theory of change for the new strategy, and she has advised the World Bank on indicators to track and assess the impact of an SME lending program on women in Nigeria. With strong skills in program and project management, Liz has trained and led research teams in countries across Central Asia, Latin America/Caribbean, the Middle East/North Africa, sub-Saharan Africa, and South and Southeast Asia.

Prior to joining CFI, Liz worked as an independent consultant. She previously worked for Microfinance Opportunities, Save the Children, and ACDI/VOCA. She holds a B.A. from McGill University and an M.A. in economics from New York University. She has lived and worked in Zimbabwe and Tajikistan.