The DCED Executive Committee (ExCo) meets once a quarter, to oversee the work of the Secretariat and the Committee’s various thematic groups. Its three members and two co-chairs are elected for two year terms; elections are held once a year at the DCED Annual Meeting.
Laurence Carter, Co-Chair
Laurence Carter joined IFC in 1993, since when he has held various positions in the Corporate Planning Department, Central and Eastern Europe Department, and most recently, based in Warsaw, Poland, leading IFC’s financial markets business development team in Moscow. Prior to joining the IFC Laurence worked for 10 years in Botswana, Swaziland, Malawi and St Helena. Laurence holds degrees in economics from the Universities of Cambridge and London, as well as the CFA. He is also a former Fellow of the Overseas Development Institute in London.
Corinna Küsel, Co-Chair
Corinna Küsel is head of the Section for Economic Policy and Private Sector Development in GTZ, the German Agency for Technical Cooperation. In this position she is in charge of coordinating GTZ’s work for conceptual development and knowledge management in this field, as well as the technical advice to GTZ projects and programmes. Between 2000 and 2005, Corinna managed a GTZ programme for private sector development in Vietnam, as well as GTZ’ network for economic development in Asia. Prior to moving to Asia, she was technical adviser at GTZ headquarters in the field of SME development (for 4 years), as well as in gender issues (for 3 years). Before joining GTZ, Corinna worked for UNIDO as well as for a private sector consultancy company. She holds a Master’s degree in development sociology and has extensive working experience in Asia and Latin America.
Martin Clemensson
Martin Clemensson is the Manager of the Small Enterprise Team at the ILO Headquarters in Geneva. The team supports the ILO field network in areas of enabling business environment, value chain and sector upgrading, business development services, association building, local economic development, informal economy upgrading, women and youth entrepreneurship, social entrepreneurship etc. From 2004 -2007 he also chaired the Business Environment Working Group of the DCED. Before taking up the assignment in Geneva, he spent eight years in Eastern and Southern Africa with the regional “Start and Improve Your Business” (SIYB) projects, based in Kenya and later in Zimbabwe. The project introduced the programme to 16 countries in the Eastern and Southern Africa region. Before joining the ILO he worked as an economist at the Swedish National Board for Consumer Policies in Stockholm, Sweden. He holds an MBA from Business School Lausanne, Switzerland.
Mavis Owusu-Gyamfi
Mavis Owusu-Gyamfi is currently responsible for setting DFID’s policy direction on private sector development (PSD) and managing a team of technical specialists that provide advice to key partners in developing countries, the international community and the UK government. Prior to this she led the team responsible for managing the Department’s portfolio to support economic growth in Nigeria. She has extensive experience in private sector led growth and has provided technical advice to governments in East, West and Southern Africa as well as the Eastern Caribbean. This included facilitating the first PSD Strategies in Ghana and Tanzania and successfully managing economic development portfolios exceeding $400m in a number of countries.
She is a political economist by training and an MPhil graduate of the Institute of Development Studies at the University of Sussex. Her publications include Binding Constraints to Growth in Nigeria (Palgrave Macmillan, 2008) and Growth and Competitiveness (World Bank, 2007).
Dag Larsson
Dag Larsson has been with Norad’s PSD-department since 1976, and served in- between as Alternate Executive Director at AsDB, Manila; been the Resident Head of Mission, Colombo; Resident Representative, India, Nepal and Bhutan (New Delhi); and most recent the Regional PSD-Adviser for Asia, New Delhi. Before joining Norad he worked 4,5 years for the Ministry of Cooperative Development, in Kiambu and Nairobi, Kenya.