Nathan EME

About Us

Our People

Clients

Nathan Associates

Where We Work

Our People

Nathan EME Ltd draws together top consultants and associates from around the world, with an intimate knowledge of the economies and the development areas they work on. Our team is truly international, hailing from Asia, Africa, Europe and the Americas, and has access to specialised knowledge, experience and formidable resources in the areas of trade, economics, financial markets and infrastructure and investment. In addition to our in-house personnel, Nathan EME has a support network of more than 200 associate consultants based in 50 developing countries who are invited to participate based on a project’s specific requirements.

Our key professionals include:

Sunil Sinha

Sunil Sinha is Managing Director of Nathan EME. Sunil is an international expert in private sector development, growth and economic inclusion issues. He has over 25 years work experience as a management consultant working for private and public sector clients in emerging markets in Latin America, the Caribbean, West, Southern and Eastern Africa, Eastern and Central Europe, and Asia. Sunil has helped donors and governments identify international best practice and develop frameworks for private sector development (PSD) including OECD's Development Assistance Committee to prepare guidelines for Pro-Poor Growth and PSD. In the private sector, he has extensive experience of formulating corporate strategies to build positions in international consumer and industrial markets, investment appraisals and corporate finance. He has also provided cutting edge think pieces in the Corporate Social Responsibility sphere including the development of an innovative methodology for measuring business impact on poverty.

Buddhika Samarasinghe

Buddhika Samarasinghe is Deputy Managing Director of Nathan EME and has over 14 years experience in the agricultural and natural resources sector, working as an advisor to governments and donor organisations (such as the World Bank), as well as working for agricultural research institutes (CGIAR system) and the multi-national agro-processing companies. He is an expert in the practical and technical issues involved in developing agricultural policy and strategies for donors and governments in Asia, Africa and Eastern Europe and has been involved in developing new thinking to incorporate a markets based approach to rural development for both DFID and the World Bank. He has significant experience in agricultural marketing, extension and information systems, privatisation, and reform of agricultural organisations.

Mark Thomas

Mark Thomas is Director of our Rural Development Practice and has worked in agricultural and rural development for 25 years (living in developing countries for over 20 years). He has an advanced understanding of trends in, and the processes of rural development through an extensive portfolio of project experience (DFID, World Bank, and EU), as a senior researcher (IDS, University of Sussex and NRI) and as a staff economist at NRI/DFID. His expertise covers: the roles of agriculture and small farm based systems in rural development in different contexts and at different stages of development; the rural sector's contribution to economic growth and poverty alleviation; sector analysis and policy development; sector strategy formulation; the impact of risk and risk mitigation/management systems; research and research management; the evolution of private and public sector roles in service provision; participatory and livelihoods approaches; extension and information systems; commercialisation and privatisation; and new approaches to marketing and market analysis.

Kerry Hamilton

Kerry Hamilton is a Senior Consultant with significant experience in the financial sector, corporate social responsibility and the management of development projects worldwide. As an experienced project manager, she has most recently played a key role in the USD 65 m. multi-donor Financial Sector Reform and Strengthening Initiative (FIRST) where she was responsible for developing, managing, and implementing wide ranging financial sector reform programmes in over fifty emerging and low-income countries. Kerry also has extensive experience in corporate social responsibility issues and has worked with private sector and not-for-profit organisations looking at the implementation of practical CSR programmes as well as evaluating and improving social and environmental practices through research and benchmarking exercises. Kerry has a background in international finance where she has held corporate banking, credit risk and operational roles in financial institutions in Europe and Asia.

Ignacio Fiestas

Ignacio Fiestas is a Senior Economist with Nathan EME with over 9 years experience as a policy specialist in poverty, growth and rural development. Ignacio has worked as an advisor for developing country governments, research institutes and for multi-lateral donor agencies including IFAD, the Inter-American Development Bank, and the World Bank where he was a staff member in the Poverty Reduction and Economic Management Group. He has extensive experience of managing large scale donor interventions in the rural sector throughout Latin America. He was one of the authors of a large scale multi-year World Bank / DFID study "Operationalising Pro- Poor Growth" which reviewed the economic growth experiences in over 14 developing throughout Africa, Asia, Central and Eastern Europe and Latin America. He also brings a wealth of experience in the micro-finance sector throughout Mexico and Central America.

Laureen Katiyo

Laureen Katiyo is a Senior Consultant with Nathan EME with over 12 years experience in a variety of capacities working in private sector development. She has worked for the International Finance Corporation (IFC) in Sub-Saharan Africa and related IFC/United Nations Development Programme projects. Her background is on financing private sector investment in Southern Africa, providing advisory services to businesses , and capacity building support. In recent years, she has worked for the Commonwealth Business Council (CBC) where she facilitated dialogue between government and the private sector to attract foreign direct investment. As a consultant at the CBC, she worked on a DFID-funded project assessing the business environment in 33 Commonwealth Council countries to produce the “Business Environment Survey – Private Sector Views 2007” report. She brings experience of private sector development in emerging markets.

Maria Valenzuela

Maria Valenzuela is a Senior Consultant with Nathan EME with over 8 years of professional experience in business development and the world-wide management of major donor-funded technical assistance projects involving large teams of experts and clients from the public and private sector. She has extensive knowledge of project management according to multi- and bilateral donors’ policies, standards and procedures (including EC, World Bank and GTZ) and is fully familiar with all contractual aspects related to the implementation of consultancy contracts. Prior to joining Nathan EME, Maria held position as senior project manager for one of Europe’s leading development consultancies, managing several EC funded programmes in public sector reform as well private sector development throughout Central and South America. Maria is fluent in English, Spanish, French and German.

Ngoc Do

Ngoc Do is a Senior Consultant with 9 years of experience in development cooperation. Ngoc has in depth-knowledge of development issues and strong experience in private sector development. In addition to her experience managing the Vietnam Challenge Fund, Ngoc has worked in agriculture and food processing, labour market and public private partnership, and value chain analysis. She also has extensive experience in local economic governance, where she was involved in the ranking of provinces in Vietnam according to the quality of their investment climate and business environment and led diagnostic workshops with provincial governments and the private sector to facilitate a policy response to the findings . Ngoc has worked for multi-donor agencies including the UNDP, and USAID, and has a background in Public Administration in International Development.

Radhika Bharat

Radhika Bharat is a Senior Consultant with strong experience in Multilateral Development Banks and the Financial Sector. Before joining Nathan EME, she worked in the Private Sector Department at the African Development Bank (AfDB), structuring financing for infrastructure projects, focusing primarily on renewable energy projects under the Clean Technology Fund. As a Young Professional at AfDB, she contributed to achieving a successful Capital Increase for the AfDB during the financial crisis in 2009, working at a high level across different AfDB departments and with other MDBs and donors. Her prior assignments at AfDB included sovereign risk management where she worked on updating the Bank’s exposure management models and conducted in depth country risk analysis, and lending operations in East Africa, where she focused on the AfDB’s dialogue with and lending to Kenya. She previously worked at ABN AMRO Bank, structuring corporate lending for emerging markets clients and restructuring existing corporate debt. She holds a Masters in Economics from the London School of Economics. She combines economic and finance skills to bring a strong expertise in financial markets, the international aid architecture and private financing for development.