Founder & Chairman, MicroRate
President, Educational Initiative for Central and Eastern Europe

Region
United States

IEDM Area of Expertise
Economic Development - Microcredit

Education
LL.M, University of Cambridge
J.D., Georgetown University Law Center
B.A. in History and English, Tulane University

Experience
Damian von Stauffenberg is an expert in international finance and developing nations. He is the founder of MicroRate, the world’s first rating agency specializing in microfinance. Through its Latin American and African subsidiaries, MicroRate has conducted well over 400 ratings of microfinance institutions in Latin America, Africa and Eastern Europe. Before dedicating himself to microfinance, Mr. von Stauffenberg worked for 25 years in the World Bank and its private sector affiliate, the International Finance Corporation (IFC).

In the past, Mr. von Stauffenberg has been closely associated with a number of institutions that have played pioneering roles in connecting microfinance to capital markets. He has been president of Seed Capital Development Fund (SCDF) - an organization dedicated to linking microlenders to commercial funding sources, chairman of the Investment Committee of Profund- a fund investing in the equity of Latin American microlenders, chairman of the executive committee of MicroVest and member of the executive committee of the Latin American Challenge Investment Fund, LA-CIF.

Mr. von Stauffenberg has over ten years of experience with the situation in post-Communist Russia which led, in 2001, to his becoming the first president of the Educational Initiative for Central and Eastern Europe.