Ms. Elizabeth (Liz) McGuinness is an independent consultant with over twenty years of experience in international development. As the founder and president of LMG Consulting LLC, she specializes in applying her monitoring, evaluation, research and learning skills to support women’s economic empowerment activities and interventions in inclusive finance, financial capabilities, agricultural development and SME development. Liz has designed and led research to support strategy and policy development, product development, learning, results measurement, and implementation, outcomes and impact evaluation. She has designed M&E systems and provided capacity building and technical assistance in M&E, including in complexity-aware methods. With strong skills in program and project management, Liz has trained and led research teams in Central Asia, Latin America/Caribbean, Middle East/North Africa, sub-Saharan Africa and South/East Asia.
As an independent consultant, Liz has worked with clients including the World Bank, CGAP, Global Banking Alliance for Women, Making Cents International, and GIZ. Her work on USAID initiatives includes consulting assignments with USAID/LEARN, USAID/MECap and US-ACTI.
Previously, Liz worked for ACDI/VOCA as Senior Director on the Financial Services team where she directed PROFIT-Plus, a USAID Feed the Future activity in Zambia and the Women’s Leadership in Small and Medium Enterprises (WLSME) activity, to grow women’s micro and small businesses, in Kyrgyzstan. As Director of Consumer Research at Microfinance Opportunities (2004-2012), Liz led process, outcomes and impact evaluations and managed a small team of researchers and consultants. Liz previously worked for Save the Children managing and providing technical assistance to microfinance programs for women (1997-2004).
She holds a BA (McGill University) and MA (New York University) in Economics.