Team
Gavin Krugel
Gavin is a Director at the GSM Association where he is responsible for mobile money strategy development, as well as leading the Mobile Money for the Unbanked initiative. Gavin also led the GSMA’s Mobile Money Transfer initiative which involved 40 mobile operators representing more than 100 markets and 1 billion consumers globally.
As one of the forefathers of mobile financial services, Gavin has been behind some of the best known mobile banking implementations in the world, and founded the boutique consulting firm TroyTyla to serve this niche industry.
Gavin has twelve years of experience in global payment systems and banking products, and has helped develop, implement and manage several successful payment products and solutions. He has held positions at banks such as Standard Bank, Absa Bank and Investec Private Bank in South Africa, as well as global companies such as MasterCard and EDS.
He is currently completing his Masters Degree at GGSB (Grenoble Graduate School of Business), France.
Seema Desai
Seema is Programme Manager for the MMU programme, responsible for managing the day-to-day programme activities and ensuring that all delivery is clearly aligned with the programme’s objectives.
Prior to joining the GSMA in March 2009, Seema managed a large portion of the Retail Savings P&L for one of the UK’s largest retail banks. Seema has also been a Manager at Accenture, within their strategy consulting division, where she focussed mainly on Financial Services and has worked with a number of FTSE 100 companies. During her 6 years at Accenture, Seema also completed two secondments to Accenture Development Partnerships, a non-profit arm of Accenture that provides business consulting to NGOs and donor organisations. She managed capacity building projects for existing NGOs in the field, and has also managed new start up projects such as the creation of an innovative social franchising network in India. She has also worked in Trinidad and Uganda. Seema holds a 1st Class Honours degree in Natural Sciences from Cambridge University.
Seema has travelled all over the world – and her rock shoes almost always come with her these days. Or her ice axes and crampons, depending on the conditions.
Paul Leishman
Paul is Knowledge Manager for the MMU programme. He is responsible for leading the development and dissemination of commercial content, including business strategy analyses focused on mobile money business models, and case studies profiling key success factors of deployments.
Prior to joining the GSMA, Paul was a Consultant at a Toronto-based firm, primarily supporting a mobile handset manufacturer during the opportunity assessment phase of a new service launch in developing and developed markets. Before this, Paul worked on the Strategic Planning & Execution team at Canadian operator, TELUS Mobility, and earned an HBA (honours business administration) with distinction from the Richard Ivey School of Business.
Amaia White
Amaia is Project Coordinator for the MMU programme and is responsible for Working Group communications and logistics, as well as project management support.
She has a wealth of organisational experience gained through a variety of roles. Prior to joining the GSMA, Amaia was Event Organiser for a Barcelona based conference organisation where she was responsible for managing events across Europe.
Amaia is fluent in Spanish and holds a BA in Linguistics and Phonetics from the University of Leeds.
