DAI’s Luckshmi Sivalingam Named 2012’s Practitioner of the Year by SEEP Network

November 13, 2012

Luckshmi Sivalingam—a development practitioner with 10 years of professional experience in project design, development, and management in South and Southeast Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa, and the Middle East—has been named Practitioner of the Year by the SEEP Network, a global membership network of more than 130 international organizations dedicated to alleviating poverty by promoting inclusive markets and financial systems.

SEEP members are active in 170 countries and support nearly 90 million entrepreneurs and their families. Every year, the SEEP Network recognizes one microfinance network, one member organization, and one individual practitioner for exceptional leadership and contributions to the industry.

“Luckshmi was nominated by a working group at SEEP where she has been a very active contributor to publications, online conferences, has helped review and draft concept notes and projects in progress,” said SEEP’s Senior Director Diana Dezso. “We are very happy to have been able to recognize Luckshmi’s leadership and contributions to SEEP learning initiatives.”

At DAI, Luckshmi focuses on inclusive economic growth, access to finance, and pro-poor agriculture value chain development. She currently manages DAI’s agriculture and health linkages community of practice, provides technical assistance and management oversight to programs overseas, and serves as the home office technical manager for the U.S. Agency for International Development project, Malawi Integrating Nutrition into Value Chains, a Feed the Future project designed to enhance the competitiveness of agricultural value chains and improve food security.

Before joining DAI, Luckshmi worked with the Grameen Foundation in its Solutions for the Poorest unit, where she oversaw microfinance, livelihoods, and enterprise development research and project implementation.

As DAI’s representative at the SEEP Network, Luckshmi has been an active member of SEEP’s Strengthening the Economic Potential of the Ultra Poor and Market Facilitation Initiative working groups, which work to expand learning, conduct research, and test market-based approaches to integrating the poor and very poor into market systems.