Consultant / Adviser ・  Development & Sustainable Finance, Impact Investment

Cerstin Sander provides advisory services in development & sustainable finance including climate finance, impact investment & private sector development from her base in Berlin & Leipzig, Germany.  She brings to her assignments operational, transactional and advisory experience in financial & private sector development, investment and technical assistance － as manager, team leader, team member and expert adviser. For specialised work and deep expertise on investment structures for impact finance, Cerstin Sander works as an independent consultant in association with Innpact (www.innpact.com).

Her assignments in Africa, Asia-Pacific, the Caribbean & Central America, and the former Soviet Union have focused on development & sustainable finance and private sector development － with extensive work in enterprise finance, microfinance, energy efficiency and renewable energy finance, agri and climate finance, migrant remittances and making markets work for the poor (M4P) covering a spectrum including, for instance, operational, strategic, policy as well regulatory aspects. Her work on investments has covered investment strategies, concepts, structuring, transformation & strategic processes and due diligence for equity, debt and structured finance. Other work included institutional assessment, performance management, strategy & planning, impact and monitoring & evaluation. She has managed regional programmes, projects and teams – both as staff of international development organisations and as a consultant.

She has spent her professional career of 35 years working in international development –– previously for the International Finance Corporation (IFC) in East Asia & Pacific; KfW, Germany’s development bank; the UK Department for International Development (DFID/UKAid); the Austrian Development Cooperation in East Africa; the Canadian International Development Research Centre; and as a consultant such as with DAI and independently.

She worked extensively on money transfer & migrant remittances and was the founding editor of the Migrant Remittances newsletter, serving as its editor until 2005. As a faculty member of the Boulder Microfinance Institute she taught migrant remittances & microfinance for five years from 2005. Cerstin was among the early members of the CGAP Microinsurance Working Group. She also served on the Board of Directors of ProCredit Bank Armenia (2008-2009), as the Team Leader of the Private Sector Development Group, OECD/DAC POVNET, in 2005, and as a member of the Private Sector Group in the Uganda budget process, MTEF, in 2001, among other special tasks.

Cerstin Sander studied international development, administrative & social sciences and law in Germany and Canada. She holds an M.A. in International Relations from Queen’s University, Canada.