Entrepreneurs for Resilience is a global competition that provides financial support and technical assistance to promising social ventures contributing to the resilience of low-income communities worldwide.
LeFil has supported this competition since inception, by managing the sourcing and application process, conducting due diligence (in-depth interviews and in-person visits), and providing insights to support the selection of winning ventures.
LeFil Consulting has its main team and office in Zurich. However, its network spans multiple continents, as it works closely with like-minded consultants, experts and entrepreneurs around the world.
Jessica Graf (Zurich-Switzerland) is the Founder and Managing Director of LeFil Consulting. Before LeFil, she spent 8 years in developing countries, serving public and non-profit institutions, such as the UNDP, Action contre la Faim, the OSCE and the Swiss Foreign and Economic Affairs. She then worked at McKinsey & Company and managed Vietnam Holding Asset Management for another 6 years. She graduated in Political Sciences at the University of Geneva, and holds an MBA from INSEAD.
Cecilia Gamba (Bologna-Italy) is an Associate Partner at LeFil. Before joining, Cecilia worked as a data analyst at WegoWise, Inc. and Elevate Energy, both US-based organisations providing energy efficiency services for affordable housing. In these positions, she specialised in leveraging data for effective product/program development and delivery. Prior to that she was a researcher with the Chicago Booth School of Business’s Initiative on Global Markets. Cecilia holds a Masters degree in Economics from the University of Bologna.
Michal Januszewski (Zurich-Switzerland) is a Senior Consultant at LeFil. Before LeFil, he worked as an intern at the UNEP/GRID center where he gained experience in analysing sustainability strategies and writing industry reports. Passionate about sustainability and international development, Michal volunteered for Sustainable Growth Associates and was a delegate at Youth Adaptation Dialogue 2022. He holds a Master’s degree in Global Business and Sustainability from Rotterdam School of Management.
Lucía Espiñeira (Buenos Aires-Argentina) is a Consultant at LeFil, and serves as the firm’s Focal Point for Latin America. Before LeFil, she worked as a Senior Analyst at ZIGLA, where she gained experience in strategy, monitoring, and evaluation of social impact projects across Latin America. Passionate about gender equality, Lucía volunteers at Ecofeminita, where she coordinates the #MenstruAcción campaign for menstrual justice, which has influenced public policies in Argentina. She holds a degree in Economics from the University of Buenos Aires and is currently pursuing a Master’s in Economic Sociology at the National University of San Martín.
Line Cottier (Zurich-Switzerland) is a Junior Consultant at LeFil. Before joining LeFil, she gained experience across public, private, non-profit, and research institutions at the nexus of climate finance and development, including Blue Earth Capital, South Pole, the City of Zurich, CFK Africa, and Persistent Energy. Outside of LeFil, she is actively engaged in non-profit initiatives spanning sustainable food systems, gender equity, and youth empowerment. She holds an MSc in Economic Policy for International Development from the London School of Economics and Political Science, as well as a BA in International Affairs from the University of St. Gallen.
Sam Zak (Zurich-Switzerland) is an Analyst at LeFil. Before joining LeFil, he worked as Chief of Staff at an XPRIZE winning marine carbon dioxide removal start-up where he gained experience in climate tech and frontier carbon removal markets. He also worked at the World Economic Forum where he served as Coordinator for 1000 Ocean Startups, a coalition backing ventures for ocean health, driving knowledge and outreach efforts. Sam holds a MSc in Environment and Development from the London School of Economics and BA in History from the University of York.
Farai Chikomba (Harare-Zimbabwe) is an environmental scientist and carbon project specialist collaborating with LeFil on a project basis. With 7+ years of experience across the carbon-project lifecycle, he has worked on forestry, agroforestry and land-based climate mitigation projects across Southern and East Africa, as well as other continents, as project developer, technical reviewer and independent auditor under the Verra VCS & CCB, Plan Vivo and Gold Standard frameworks, including as a Technical Review Panel Member for Plan Vivo and Senior Program Officer for Verra. He holds an MSc in Biological Sciences from the University of Cape Town.
Cindy de León (Guatemala City-Guatemala) is a gender mainstreaming specialist and r.rise-accredited technical assistance expert, who regularly collaborates with LeFil. With 13+ years of experience across Latin America, she specializes in women’s economic empowerment, investment readiness, and gender-responsive strategies for entrepreneurship ecosystems. She has worked with UNDP, USAID, Global Affairs Canada, and the U.S. Embassy, and leads her own women’s economic empowerment initiative. She holds a Marketing degree from Universidad Rafael Landívar and an MBA Magna Cum Laude from Universidad Galileo.
Malou Geerlings (Zurich-Switzerland) is a sustainability professional who regularly collaborates with LeFil in its due diligence work. She also works as a Project Manager in the Environmental and Health Department of the City of Zurich, where she leads projects on climate action, sustainable food systems, and monitoring and evaluation. Prior to this, she worked in academia and volunteered with Fairtrade initiatives. She holds an MSc in Environmental Sciences and a BSc in Environmental Engineering from ETH Zurich.
Inès Mazas (Uruçuca-Brazil) is a consultant with expertise in strategy, impact measurement and management, and gender inclusion, who regularly collaborates with LeFil. She served as a consultant at Accenture and Hystra, and worked for five years in Guatemala as Head of Impact at Alterna, an incubator and impact investing fund for rural entrepreneurs. She holds a Master of Science in Business and Administration from the ESSEC Business School and a Master in Public Policy and Development from Paris Descartes University.
Aziz Mebarek (Tunisia) in the Founding Partner of AfricInvest. Aziz has over 20 years of experience in the private equity industry in the Maghreb, Sub-Saharan Africa and Southern Europe. He participated in raising around 1 billion USD private equity funds as well as structuring and executing several equity transactions. Prior to AfricInvest, Aziz was the General Manager of two industrial companies, ILVA Maghreb and Tunisacier International (part of Ilva the Italian Steel manufacturing conglomerate).
Eric Kacou (Abidjan – Ivory Coast) is the Co-founder and CEO of Entrepreneurial Solutions Partners, an advisory and investment group to entrepreneurs and leaders across Africa and the Caribbean. Prior to ESPartners, Eric led the Rwanda National Innovation and Competitiveness Program and advised leaders of business, government and development organizations worldwide. He earned his MBA at the Wharton School and his MPA at the Harvard Kennedy School.
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Our team members are proud to have served many clients, including corporations (e.g. Nestlé, LVMH), industry alliances, public and development players (e.g. Swiss Development Cooperation, World Bank, Government of Kazakhstan), as well as impact investors (e.g. responsAbility) and foundations (e.g. Swiss Re Foundation). Our team has also deep insights on hundreds of social businesses and social innovations worldwide, notably in the fields of housing, energy, water, sanitation, information and communication technologies, financial services, health, agriculture, mobility, nutrition and aging.
LeFil Consulting has been a key partner for New Ventures in our effort to catalyze the growth of social businesses in Latin America. LeFil has been invaluable both as a direct supporter of entrepreneurs through content developed for data measurement, gender initiatives, amongst others and as the strategic consultant for a broader partnership that includes Ashoka and the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation.
With LeFil’s support, we have been able to directly support almost 50 social businesses from all over Latin America. In turn, this has allowed us to positively impact hundreds of thousands of people from underserved communities. We are delighted to have worked with LeFil in the past and look forward to continue collaboration in the future.
Daniel Reyes – Acceleration Manager – New Ventures
LeFil’s analysis report has been really useful and beneficial for Mamotest, as its been the process we went through together, with great professionalism. The results showed our company’s potential growth and the positive and social impact we have had on thousands of women.
It was a great opportunity for Mamotest to work in such a deep analysis, getting to understand the importance of measuring KPIs, and going through the entire process of social impact and it’s beneficiaries. We’re sure the results obtained will help us on the visibilization of the impact we’re generating, and continue growing the network together with the public sector and private organizations.
Camila de Pamphilis – COO – Mamotest
We collaborated with LeFil over the last two years to set up and deliver training programs for social entrepreneurs in topics such as gender mainstreaming and the use of data in management. Thanks to our collaboration with LeFil, we contributed to fostering the analytical and critical thinking skills of the teams of tens of social enterprises throughout Latin America and Africa, profoundly impacting the way they are thinking and doing business. It was a truly inspiring journey!
Rafael Boff – Partner – Ventus Learning
Essmart had the privilege of working over the past 6 months with LeFil Consulting on multiple strategic initiatives. With LeFil team’s help, we collected and analyzed precious data about our shop owner network, which will be a critical part of Essmart’s strategic planning for the years to come. With support from LeFil, we have been able to transform our data from a sea of numbers to valuable insights.
Jackie Stenson – Co-Founder and CEO – Essmart Global
As winners of the 2018 Entrepreneurs for Resilience Award sponsored by the Swiss Re Foundation, ColdHubs has received valuable support from LeFil Consulting over the course of 2 years. LeFil’s team helped us analyze our sales data and customer behavior, refine our marketing approach and strengthen our financial management. We have benefitted from their experience with social entrepreneurs, and their understanding of the challenges and opportunities that come with working in low-income settings. Thanks to LeFil’s support we are now in a stronger position to continue growing our business and impact.
Nnaemeka Ikegwuonu – CEO – ColdHubs
We appreciate LeFil’s support to make Swiss Re Foundation’s vision to build a resilient society a reality. Your contribution to identify, assess and coach promising ventures addressing key resilience issues clearly drives the success of our Entrepreneurs for Resilience Award. Your entrepreneurial approach, expertise and flexibility drive the very positive outcomes we experienced with this Award since its launch.
Stefan Huber Fux – Director – Swiss Re Foundation
LeFil Consulting is supporting us on critical strategic topics and initiatives since 2017. Our team participated in the Gender Mainstreaming program, which resulted in the development of the Mujer Bive tu Salud Project, which promotes the early diagnosis of breast and cervical cancer in rural Colombia. Thanks to LeFil’s support, we subsequently received a CHF 10’000 grant from the Swiss Development and Cooperation that helped us launch the project and reach 500 women. As a consequence of this first investment, we managed to raise additional funds and reached 1’750 women in the first year. We also benefitted from LeFil’s advice to strengthen our business model and create partnerships with investors and other entrepreneurs. This support allowed us to greatly increase our impact and develop a partnership with other actors of the health sector, that will allow chronic diabetic patients to better understand their condition and to improve their quality of life.
Diana Quintero – Co-Founder – Bive
I had a more than satisfying experience with LeFil, as their workshop on ‘Leading with Data’ convinced me about the importance of using data to lead and improve our organization. Thanks to this training, my company is now better addressing its customers’ needs.
The knowledge I gained was successfully transferred to my team and we established tracking and analysis tools that we will keep using in future.
Jimmy Bruce – D&E Enterprises
We are glad to have selected LeFil Consulting and team to design our Inclusive Innovation Consortium Grant Program in 2018. By applying their extensive international experience to our local context, LeFil’s team helped us design the first ever Inclusive Innovation Program in Kazakhstan. To fully understand the situation in Kazakhstan and the underlying problems that the region is facing, LeFil’s team did a very insightful field visit, led workshops, and ultimately helped us understand how to move forward. Thanks to their work, our Program was launched successfully.
Darkhan Seitkazin – Manager – Fostering Productive Innovations Project (Government of Kazakhstan)
LeFil Consulting worked with Oxfam during 2019, introducing private sector participation in the management of rural potable water in Kenya. They provided encompassing analyses of the institutional, technical, financial, environmental and social background, facilitated the program design, and conducted due diligence and formative research analytics. LeFil Consulting is diligent in its work and their collaborative and innovative spirit makes them the go-to expert for our most significant projects in reference to market-based models for operation and maintenance of rural water schemes. They are detail-oriented, well organized and always open to constructive feedback, making our business relationship both effortless and pleasant. We recommend LeFil Consulting for any role through which the firm can contribute their remarkable creativity and dedication.
Matthew Cousins – Director – Humanitarian Systems Strengthening
Thanks to a competition that LeFil is facilitating on behalf of a large Swiss foundation, our company – Altech – got a grant that helped us grow significantly faster. But with this growth came a whole lot of questions and opportunities as for how to manage our sales force. LeFil obliged us to first gather data and facts about our current performance and approach, before developing any recommendations. On this basis, we evolved our sales strategy in a much sounder and confident way, rather than on gut feeling or experimental pilots. They also helped us improve our working capital management, an essential step in this new phase of our company. We are very grateful to LeFil for helping us laying the foundations for a successful expansion operation – both in terms of impact and business.
Washikala Malango – Co-Founder and CEO – Altech Group
As part of the benefits we received as winners of the 2019 Entrepreneurs for Resilience Award, CarePay has the opportunity to work with LeFil and receive customized strategic advisory. We had the pleasure of welcoming LeFil’s team in our Nairobi offices for an in-depth problem-solving session, through which they helped us articulate the impact of our solution not only on our direct clients, but on the broader ecosystem too. Through their analytical support, we will be able to quantify the value that CarePay unlocks for different stakeholders, which will help us strengthen our business case and sharpen our focus. We look forward to continuing to work with LeFil’s team!
Moses Kuria – Managing Director – CarePay