Mifos Welcomes Advisor, Allison Baller
We are excited to formally announce the newest member of our board of business and technical advisors, Allison Baller. Allison provides the relevant experience and knowledge of the global fintech market to make an immediate impact here at the Mifos Initiative. As a new member of the Mifos Advisory Board, Allison is motivated and passionate about exploring new ways to leverage technology and build innovative business models for financial health which will make a difference globally for the underserved.
A unique skill set Allison hopes to bring to the Mifos Initiative as an advisor is her strong interest and experience with “the customer”, and the ability to develop new business models often with emerging technology and a passion for creating innovative partnerships. Allison has had the opportunity to fine tune these skills from her 2 decades of experience engaging with Banks, Telecommunications companies, and retailers and Fintechs across emerging markets in Latin America, Africa, and Southeast Asia. Allison says that she is “especially excited to engage in some of the Mifos endeavors in Latin America”. That being said, Allison is happy to work on any project in any market as well.
Here’s a bit more on Allison: Allison serves as the Vice President and Head of Industry Readiness for the FedNow Service, a near real-time payment and settlement service under development by the Federal Reserve Banks to support instant payments in the United States. Baller helps facilitate industry readiness specifically focused on adoption and innovation through partnerships across the ecosystem of Banks, Payment Service Providers, and Fintechs. Prior to joining the Federal Reserve, Baller spent more than two decades at IBM, where she held various global leadership roles in blockchain, cloud, and emerging payments. Her career has focused on building new business models and accelerating the transformation from cash to digital payments across Financial Services, Telecommunications, and Retail.
When asked about the most critical action we can take to end global poverty, Baller responded with this list:
- “An ability to foster strong public-private partnerships”
- “The need to ensure we develop sustainable business models to support financial health across nations”
- “Strong education and marketing communication”
- “Incentives to spur new ideas which build upon emerging technology and the latest innovations with open standards on a global platform”
We are eager to work with Allison in executing upon that list and already have a number of projects in mind that she can help to steward including:
- Sustainability of the initiative by enabling more self-funded revenue derived from the value being created by fintechs across our ecosystem.
- Development of the ecosystem, especially around the market-readiness of solution providers, with a focus on mobile wallets and payments interoperability
- Positioning and branding for Mifos Initiative – translating from our current developer-centric orientation to a narrative that aligns with global funders and partners that could catalyze and support our efforts.
An interesting fact about Allison is that she has always had a passion for exploring new markets and making a difference to improve lives around the world.
“I have many fond memories and I have learned a lot from my experience in diverse countries including Nigeria, Kenya, South Africa, the Philippines, Thailand, Cuba, and many others. My love for diverse cultures, languages, and adventure stemmed from spending time studying and exploring Central America, followed by my first “real job” which I held while living in Venezuela in the early 90’s”
Please help in welcoming in Allison to the Mifos Community! We thank her for providing her time and knowledge to help the initiative.
