Michael Wiegand, Director of the Financial Services for the Poor initiative, leads the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s effort to make high quality financial services widely accessible to poor people throughout the developing world. The FSP team works with a wide range of public and private sector partners to foster the development of digital payment systems—such as mobile money—that can reach hundreds of millions of people with the financial tools they need to mitigate risks and capture opportunities to move out of poverty.
 
Before joining the foundation in 2016, Michael spent 10 years with Standard Chartered Bank. He was most recently the Global Head of Retail Deposit Products, prior to which he managed the bank’s retail banking business across Southern Africa and was the CEO of Standard Chartered Bank Botswana. He also spent more than six years with McKinsey & Company serving leading financial institutions in the U.S., Australia, Eastern Europe and the Middle East.
 
Michael holds a PhD in Economics from Northwestern and a Master of Science degree in Public Management and Policy and a Bachelor of Science degree in Economics from Carnegie Mellon.