Mita Samani is a Senior Consultant in Development and Climate Finance. She has a focus on investment and finance and has worked across a range of issues including climate change, energy, water and sanitation, and reform of International Financial Institutions. She has worked on MDB reform agendas, particularly the World Bank, AsDB and AfDB, and represented the UK on the Board of the European Bank of Reconstruction and Development for three years. Mita led DFID’s investment and business engagement work, including reform and expansion of DFID’s Development Finance Institution, British International Investment (formerly CDC) when she managed the UK’s shareholding of BII, PIDG and FSDA.

In 2017 she set up DFID’s Public Finance and Tax Department where she built a team to design and implement a cross-government approach to scale up tax and development to support developing countries raise revenue sustainably.  In 2019 she became head of the Private Sector Department, leading a team of over 70 people and deploying an annual budget of c. £700m-1bn across a range of policy and programmatic agendas including impact investment, disaster risk and pandemic insurance, financial sector deepening and capital markets development, infrastructure and climate finance and mobilization of private finance. Mita is currently working with partners such as PIDG, Helios Investment Partners, and Acorn Holdings Africa as a freelance consultant to design investment platforms to mobilize private capital into Africa and Asia.

Liz Wilson is Deputy CEO at Small Foundation, an innovative family foundation based in Ireland focused on increasing income-generating opportunities for the rural poor in sub-Saharan Africa, managing and developing their expertise and practice around impact networks, systems, impact management, and communications. Previously Liz has worked as deputy director and co-founder of Agriculture for Impact & The Montpellier Panel, Imperial College London, providing evidence and analysis to European governments to support their approach to agricultural development, food and nutrition security in sub-Saharan Africa. As a project officer in DFID China, she worked on partnership initiatives to pilot climate change adaptation, low carbon development and sustainable urban development strategies. She also worked for the humanitarian health NGO Merlin in the DRC and the UK, and served as a diplomat in the UK Embassy in China.  Liz is a trustee of the Nigeria-based Visiola Foundation.

Liz received an MA in German and Spanish language and literature at the University of St Andrews, and an MSc in Development Management from the Open University. She was a Robert T Jones Memorial Scholar at Emory University.