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◦ India
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Grameen Foundation : Who we are : Our People : Committees and Councils : India

India Advisory Council

Vikram Gandhi, Chair

Vikram Gandhi is Head of the Global Financial Institutions Group (FIG) at Credit Suisse. In addition to significant client responsibilities, Mr. Gandhi is responsible for the coordination and integration of CSFB’s financial institutions capabilities across a wide range of advisory and financing products, including derivatives and structure products.

Before joining CSFB, Mr. Gandhi spent 16 years at Morgan Stanley where he held various positions including the Co-Head of the Financial Institutions Practice; Head of Institutional Strategy and Business Development; Chief Operating Officer for the Firm’s E-Commerce Steering Committee; and President, Morgan Stanley India.

Mr. Gandhi has a wealth of experience in being involved in various Financial Institutions high-profile M&A transactions and financings across the globe; such as Bank of America’s acquisition of Fleet, the sale of National Processing Company to Bank of America, merger of Chase Manhattan and Chemical Bank, the sale of First Fidelity to First Union, and Bank of Boston’s acquisition to Bay Bank.

Mr. Gandhi received his B. Com from the University of Bombay and an MBA from the Harvard Business School, where he was designed a Baker Scholar. He is also a qualified Chartered Accountant.

Susan Davis, Member

Susan serves as the Vice President and Director of Global Academy for Social Entrepreneurship. She oversees expansion to the Middle East and Central Asia region. Susan also acts as an advisor to the International Labor Organization and Environmental Defense. In 1997, she helped to found and now chairs the board of the Grameen Foundation. She also serves on the boards of Project Enterprise and Aid to Artisans. Susan is a member of the Positive Futures Network and serves on the Human Rights Advisory Council of the Ethical Globalization Initiative. Susan lived in Bangladesh from 1987-1991 where she worked for the Ford Foundation and was responsible for the organizing the donor consortia to scale up Grameen Bank, BRAC and Proshika. She also started Ashoka's program in Bangladesh and was its first volunteer representative. She was educated at Georgetown, Harvard and Oxford universities.

Robert Eichfeld, Member

During a 33-year career with Citigroup, Mr. Eichfeld managed many of Citibank's country and regional activities in postings throughout the Caribbean, Brazil, India, Indonesia, New Zealand, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. While abroad, he also served on the boards of several business and community affairs organizations including chairing various school boards. Since 2000, he has continued to use the unique business and cultural awareness skills that arise from having lived in or traveled to over 100 countries. He has advised a de-novo venture capital fund in Dubai, and with other investors, helped to set up a new Islamic bank in Bahrain. He advised Harvard Business School when it established its executive training program for the Middle East and he is currently a member of the Global Advisory Council at his alma mater, the Garvin School of International Management at Thunderbird. He also remains active in Rotary, particularly with Rotary’s international microfinance and other social development programs and is a member of the International Executive Services Corps and the Financial Services Volunteer Corps. . Bob’s other interests include international current affairs, tennis, hiking, rafting, extensive travel.

Jim Greenberg, Member

Chairman and CEO of DevCorp International, Greenberg developed and managed two large joint venture companies in Saudi Arabia as General Manager. In 1995 he became the founding partner of DevCorp International E.C., a GCC based venture development and investment company with active projects spanning shrimp farming, petrochemicals, light manufacturing, and telecoms/IT. Jim is a 1968 Graduate of West Point and holds advanced degrees from Harvard Business School, the University of Southern California, and the Industrial College of the Armed Forces.

Elke Ward-Smith, Member

Elke Ward-Smith, a multilingual German citizen, started her 20 year banking career at Citibank NY with assignments in Latin America, Europe and Asia. These assignments typically involved building new structured finance business and taking US financial expertise to “emerging” markets and helping multinationals raise liquidity in an environment of debt crises and strict capital controls. Elke later joined Chase Manhattan Asia, Ltd in Hong Kong to set up an Asian Structured Finance Unit, then moved onto UBS in Zurich and London to add her international tax expertise to Project and Leveraged Finance. Most recently Elke structured and closed tax efficient cross border transactions for the German HypoVereinsbank working out of its London, Munich and New York offices.

Deepak Amin, Member

Deepak is the co-founder and CEO of Covelix, Inc, a Seattle and India based software consulting company. Prior to Covelix, Deepak was the Senior Vice-President at Streamserve, heading its next generation web services products division. Prior to Streamserve, Deepak was the founder and CEO of vJungle, Inc, a web services integration and deployment platform company. Deepak also worked at Microsoft for many years as a technical lead in Microsoft Works and Windows95 Networking teams and was a senior engineer in the original Internet Explorer team at Microsoft, Redmond-USA.

Chandni Ohri, Staff Liasion

Chandni is a development professional with a keen interest in poverty alleviation. Chandni completed her MBA from the Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore, India and worked in the corporate sector for some time. She then completed a Masters in International Studies with a major in International Development from the University of Washington, Seattle. Chandni works with our partners in India and Pakistan. She is a native of India and is fluent in Hindi, Punjabi and conversational Urdu.

Grameen Foundation : Who we are : Our People : Committees and Councils : India