Board of Directors and Officers

Keith Palzer, Chairman of the Board
Mr. Palzer is a Director in the Global Markets & Investment Banking Group of Merrill Lynch & Co., Inc., in the Global Equity Linked Products division. He joined Merrill Lynch in 1997 and held previous posts as a Director in the Global Debt Markets New Products Development team and the Office of General Counsel. From 1994 until 1997, Mr. Palzer was in private law practice in New York City and Washington, D.C. in the areas of international finance, banking regulation, and investment management. From 1988 until 1997, Mr. Palzer was an attorney with the United States Department of the Treasury, beginning in the Departments Honors Program and subsequently working as an Attorney-Advisor in the Department’s Office of International Affairs on international financial, investment and trade issues in various international and national fora, including the World Trade Organization, the NAFTA negotiations and the United States Congress. Mr. Palzer has a Bachelor of Arts from State University of New York and a J.D. from Northwestern University.

Gil Crawford, Director
Mr. Crawford is General Manager of MicroVest Capital Management, an investment management firm specializing in micro-finance investments. Gil founded Seed Capital in 1991 and was the President of the organization from 1991 until 1999. From 1999 to 2003, Mr. Crawford was an officer in the Latin American Financial Markets Division at the International Finance Corporation (IFC), the private sector arm of the World Bank Group, where he focused on investments in microfinance institutions. Prior to founding Seed Capital, Mr. Crawford worked at Chase Manhattan Bank in New York City, as well as the Red Cross and the United States Department of State in Africa. He has a Masters in International Relations from the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University (1983) and a Bachelor of Arts from Bates College (1980).

Xavier Rielle, Director
Mr. Reille is a Senior Microfinance Specialist with the Consultative Group on Alleviation of Poverty at the World Bank Group, where he is a member of the CGAP management team. He is the director of a G8 initiative to scale up microfinance in the Arab world and the Founder of the Microfinance Gateway, the leading microfinance online portal in the world. He is also Chairman of the Microfinance Information eXchange (MIX), a corporation linking microfinance institutions with investors sponsored by CGAP, Deutsche Bank, Citigroup and the Open Society Institute. Before joining CGAP, Mr. Reille worked with Catholic Relief Services (CRS), where he was the Regional Microfinance Adviser for Southeast Asia. During his three-year assignment with CRS, he set up a major investment company for rural banks in Indonesia and developed a rating methodology for those banks. Prior to CRS, he was Operations Director at Société d’Investissement et de Développement International (SIDI), where he played a role in the creation of ProFund (an $23 million equity fund for microfinance institutions in South America) and the development of Centenary Bank (a commercial microfinance bank in Uganda). Mr. Reille has a master’s degree in international finance from the University of Paris. He is fluent in French, Spanish, and English, and speaks Bahasa Indonesia.

Moya Connelly, Director-Designate, Treasurer and Assistant Secretary
Ms. Connelly is the Chief Financial Officer for MicroVest Capital Management. Prior to MicroVest, Ms. Connelly worked at the Microcredit Summit Campaign. A graduate of Smith College with a degree in Economics, Moya worked in financial services for six years including fund management jobs at Brown Brothers Harriman and Evergreen Funds. Ms. Connelly is a candidate for the CFA professional certification, having passed Level I.

James A. Torrey, Director-Designate
Mr. Torrey is the Chairman and CEO of The Torrey Funds, a pioneering hedge fund-of-funds complex operating in the international and US long-short equity space. James Torrey has been one of the foremost investors in hedge funds for 25 years. He attended the University of California at Berkeley and, from 1976 through early 1996, held executive positions at Kidder, Peabody & Co., The First Boston Corporation, Paine Webber Incorporated, and Alex. Brown & Sons. Throughout his career, Mr. Torrey has been an advisor to wealthy individuals, pension funds, endowments and foundations. He recognized years ago that a portfolio of long and short securities-that is, a hedged equity portfolio-was a powerful alternative to a traditional long-only portfolio. He pioneered the philosophy that a long/short portfolio should be considered as a complement to, and in some cases, a substitute for a long-only portfolio. In addition, Mr. Torrey was one of the first to recognize that hedge fund managers have life cycles, and that superior performance is often associated with managers in their first few years of their hedge fund careers. In 1990, Mr. Torrey founded The Torrey Funds, a fund of funds family that invests with hedge fund managers both in the United States and internationally. The Torrey Funds manage in excess of $1 billion as of year-end 2005.

Kay Murray, Secretary
Ms. Murray is General Counsel and Assistant Executive Director of the Authors Guild, Inc., the nation’s largest membership association of published, professional book authors and freelance writers. She is also the Executive Director of the Authors Guild Foundation, a supporting organization recognized as tax exempt pursuant to Section 501(c)3 of the Internal Revenue Code. As well, she is the Executive Editor of the Authors Guild Bulletin, a quarterly publication of business and legal advice. Kay is a 1988 graduate of Northwestern University Law School and practiced as a litigator at the law firms of Rogers & Wells (September 1998 - June 1990; April 1992 - April 1994) and Kornstein Veisz & Wexler (June 1990 - April 1992) before joining the Authors Guild in 1994. In that capacity, she focused on securities fraud and insurance defense in large, complex litigations. She is co-author, with Tad Crawford, of The Writer’s Legal Guide: An Authors Guild Desk Reference, 3rd Ed. (Allworth Press, 2002)

Sharini Kulasinghe, Program Officer
Ms. Kulasinghe completed her bachelor degree in 2006. Her studies focused on development economics and her undergraduate thesis dealt with the effect of India’s bureaucracy on the country’s development. Ms. Kulasinghe gained experience in microfinance while working with Banyan Global, a micro-enterprise consultancy in New York, on an IFC-sponsored survey of women’s access to finance in 2006. In the summer of 2005, Ms. Kulasinghe worked with the New York Regional Grantmakers to compile a guide for grantmakers to use during a disaster. Ms. Kulasinghe has also held previous positions in Sri Lanka at the Institute of Policy Studies, an economic research institute and John Keels Stockbrokers.