SIMONE DI CASTRI, PhD
Simone is a frontier digital economy and financial market leader with 15 years of high-impact engagement in the fields of banking, payments, telecom and technology. He loves evidence-based policymaking, data that show insights and tell stories, and the use of technology and innovative processes to achieve social and economic equality. He has extensive experience in public sector policy development, private sector partnership, advocacy and academia, and my focus are the emerging markets.
He is a passionate and innovative professional able to successfully lead projects from co-creation to implementation and evaluation. His specialization is the ideation of new processes and solutions to address complex problems, influencing the strategies of multiple stakeholders to enhance their impacts.
He has undertaken engagements with clients such as the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Omidyar Network, USAID, the Better Than Cash Alliance, Facebook, the World Bank, fintech startups, central banks, and finance ministries. Former employers include the GSMA, the World Bank, the United Nations, the Alliance for Financial Inclusion (AFI), the International Development Law Organization (IDLO), and the consulting firm BFA Global. For two years he taught a course, “Digital Approaches to Development: ICT4D and Digital Citizenship” at the Fletcher School, Tufts University.
Among the initiatives that Simone has conceived and implemented are the GSMA Code of Conduct for Mobile Money Providers, the AFI Consumer Empowerment and Market Conduct working group, and the RegTech for Regulators Accelerator (R2A).
His current focus is the development of innovative and inclusive digital and financial ecosystems, digital citizenship, open data, and RegTech / SupTech solutions. He also serve as a member of the Center for Financial Inclusion Advisory Council, and the Tufts University’s Fletcher School Leadership Program for Financial Inclusion Advisory Committee.
MATT GRASSER
Matt leads the group of talented technologists that work with R2A. He is a seasoned technologist and entrepreneur in the US startup scene. He founded and served in leadership roles in several NYC-based startups and more recently turned his attention to the developing world and is passionate about more pressing technology and data challenges in the financial and social inclusion space.
Matt holds a BSc in Aerospace Engineering from the University of Wisconsin, and was pursuing a PhD in Physics when he withdrew to focus efforts on his growing startups: Bytemark, an international mobile payments and ticketing platform and LDLN, a post-disaster-oriented Locally Distributed Logistics Network that empowers “dark” communities without requiring an external power grid or internet/cellular infrastructure.
He is currently serving as Co-Head of the Cambridge SupTech Lab, Tech Lead at the Cambridge Center for Alternative Finance (CCAF), a Tech & Data Specialist at Catalyst Fund, and a Consulting Associate at BFA Global. He is also Founder and CEO of DIGI Studio, a globally-oriented consulting firm informing strategy, development, and deployment of inclusive technological solutions.
DAVID PORTEOUS, PhD
David is the Founder and Chair of BFA Global and Co-founder and Chair of Digital Frontiers Institute. He has undertaken consulting assignments in the areas of financial strategy and policy for a wide range of clients including public clients such as DFID, the World Bank, CGAP and private clients including banking and telco groups.
Prior to relocating to Boston in 2004, he was active in executive leadership roles in the development finance sector of South Africa with private and public financial institutions as well as FinMark Trust, an NGO involved in promoting financial inclusion policies and projects, and a public-private partnership which sought to promote low-income housing securitization.
He has written several books including Banking on Change, a book which chronicles and analyzes changes in the retail financial sector of South Africa in the decade since democracy. David has a Bachelor of Commerce from the University of Cape Town, an MPhil from the University of Cambridge and a PhD (Economics) from Yale University.