Mayada El-Zoghbi

Mayada El-Zoghbi is the managing director of the Center for Financial Inclusion at Accion. Until September 2019, Ms. El-Zoghbi was a senior financial sector specialist and led CGAP’s strategy, research and development unit. Her work focused on leading CGAP’s research on women’s financial inclusion, financial services in crisis environments and other emerging topics.

Before joining CGAP, she founded and managed a development consulting firm working with funding agencies such as the IFC and USAID. She led numerous technical assistance, evaluation, and research assignments and also served as a research director for a USAID knowledge management initiative on microfinance and conflict, where she authored numerous papers and facilitated many industry learning events. She holds a master’s degree in international affairs from SIPA at Columbia University and a bachelor's degree in business from the University of Minnesota. She is bilingual in Arabic and English.

By Mayada El-Zoghbi

Research

Getting Smart about Financial Inclusion

This Focus Notes discusses lessons learned through the implementation of the SmartAid Index--a tool launched by CGAP in 2007 to measure and improve the effectiveness of funders in supporting financial inclusion.
Research

Facilitating the Market for Capacity Building Services

This Focus Note addresses the question: what does it take to facilitate a sustainable, commercially viable market for capacity building services delivered to financial service providers?
Research

SmartAid Index 2014

This Technical Guide is aimed at funders interested in analyzing their effectiveness in financial inclusion. It describes the methodology of the SmartAid Index and explains how to use SmartAid.
Blog

Postal Networks: a Physical Link to the Digital Economy

The latest White Paper from the U.S. Postal Service exploring the potential to build its existing financial services products to help the poor is getting a lot of ink in the press, and rightfully so.
Blog

10 Things You May Not Know about Postal Networks

Postal networks have undertaken major transformations. They are increasingly leveraging their branch networks to play a role in financial services, and many are emerging as important gateways for financial inclusion of the world's poor.