Hubertus Van der Vaart was one of the two co-founders of Small Enterprise Assistance Funds (“SEAF”) in 1989, when it was known as the CARE Small Business Assistance Corporation. Today, he is SEAF’s Chairman and oversees equity capital of more than $450 million invested in emerging markets SMEs through a network of 19 offices in Latin America, Central Europe and Asia. From 1997 through February 2008, Hubertus was President and Chief Executive Officer, and was largely responsible for building up what is SEAF’s network of local offices. SEAF has made more than 270 investments and made more than 150 exits from these SMEs.
Hubertus established and served as Director-General of SEAF’s first fund in Poland in 1992. Between 1994 and 1997, the company completed 27 investments and realized its first 6 exits. In 1997, Hubertus became SEAF’s CEO and President, where he has been involved with the establishment and supervision of each of SEAF's 19 funds globally, including in Sichuan, China, Vietnam, India, Central Asia, Afghanistan, Georgia, Peru, Colombia, and virtually every country in Central and Eastern Europe. He sits on every SEAF fund’s Investment Committee, and has been involved in managing each exit.
Iqbal Z. Quadir is the founder and director of the Legatum Center for Development and Entrepreneurship at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), which promotes bottom-up entrepreneurship in developing countries. In the 1990s, Quadir founded GrameenPhone, which provides effective telephone access throughout Bangladesh and which became Bangladesh’s largest telephone company, with net income of $250 million in 2006. His childhood exposure to the conditions in rural Bangladesh combined with his later venture capital experience in New York led Quadir to recognize that the ensuing digital revolution could facilitate the introduction of telephony to 100 million people living in rural Bangladesh.
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For four years, Quadir taught at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, focusing on the impact of technologies in the politics and economics of developing countries. In 2005, he moved to MIT. His particular research interest is in the democratizing effects of technologies in developing countries. Quadir appeared on CBC, CNN and PBS and was profiled in feature articles in The Economist, Boston Globe, Financial Times and The New York Times, and in several books. The World Economic Forum, based in Geneva, Switzerland, selected him as a “Global Leader for Tomorrow”.
Francis J. Calcagno has an extensive background in providing financial advisory services to middle market private and public companies, including mergers & acquisitions, financing and strategic joint venturing. Currently, Frank serves as a Managing Director of Pickwick Capital Partners, an investment banking boutique specializing in providing financial services to middle market companies and third party marketing services to the investment management community. Prior to becoming a principal at Pickwick Capital Partners in 2009, he held Managing Director positions at Dominick & Dominick and Deloitte & Touche LLP as well as senior positions at C.J. Lawrence/Morgan Grenfell and Bankers Trust Co.
Frank has also held board positions with several private and public companies, both domestic and international. He holds a MBA in Finance from Washington University (St. Louis) and a BS in Electrical Engineering from Worcester Polytechnic Institute.
