Agha Hussain
Washington DC, US
President
Mr. Hussain is the President and founder of Support for Transforming Applied Practice (STRAP). He has twenty-four (24+) plus years of an executive leadership career in public financial management, advisory, auditing, financial reporting, ERP implementations, and data analytics. He has been associated with the World Bank (WB) for over ten (10+) years as a consulting staff in senior advisory roles. Mr. Hussain has widespread work experience in international PFM projects in East Africa, South Asia, the Middle East, UK, and the US. His country experience includes Kenya, Ethiopia, Rwanda, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and the United States. While representing the WB, Mr. Hussain has supported the project teams in the borrowing countries in improving their financial management performance and capacity to provide reasonable assurance on the use of World Bank's loan proceeds.
Mr. Hussain is a Certified Finance & Accounting Professional (ICAP), Certified Financial Consultant US (IFC), and Certified Public Accountant (ICPAP).
Maria Agha
Washington DC, US
Vice President (VP)
Currently working as VP Operations in STRAP in the US (Oakland, CA). She has been actively involved in monitoring & evaluation (M&E) for the Non-Governmental Sector (NGO) working with all the major donor agencies with a special focus on impact assessments and progress reporting on the key performance indicators, interpolating results and analyzing trends and advising on the operating effectiveness of the project. Ms. Maria has professional experience using statistical software packages and large datasets. She has strong analytical skills and fluency with quantitative research methods. She has the ability to synthesize new information quickly and develop expertise in a range of research areas and policy issues. A trained researcher for BBC GMR has worked in the UK for three years while conducting two live programs leading and coordinating supplement programs for the Northern area in the UK. She was the lead journalist covering the Youth Supplement for the Telegraph and Argus Daily tabloid and has extensively traveled throughout Europe.
Ms. Agha has MSc. Strategic Information Systems Management, Sheffield Hallam University, UK and BA Hons Business Studies from Sheffield Hallam University, UK. She has also taken Higher National Diploma HND from Manchester City College, UK.
Alex Boyd
Oakland, California, US
Adviser
Alex Boyd is an international business strategy and economic development professional with a wide range of private sector development, competitiveness, value chain development, and business planning experience, both in the U.S. and overseas. He specializes in assisting regions, and industries and individual firms within those regions to compete helping to facilitate their sustained and profitable participation in overseas competitive markets by translating industry and market trends into concrete business opportunities. His primary area of work has been as a competitiveness and private sector development practitioner, having worked extensively in areas such as SME competitiveness, value chain and cluster analysis and strengthening, access to finance, association and organizational development and trade and investment promotion across a wide range of industries and economic sectors, as well as the design of region and country-level innovation and competitiveness enabling program.
Mr. Boyd has Masters in Pacific and International Affairs from the University of California, San Diego School of Global Policy and Strategy (GPS).
Hernando Quintero
Washington DC, US
Adviser
Mr. Quintero has designed and implemented information systems for conditional and non-conditional cash transfer projects and other social development programs in Africa, South Asia, Eastern Europe, Latin America, and the Caribbean, in all about 30 countries. He has worked for the World Bank as IT consultant for over 13 years. Mr. Quintero has managed teams of IT specialists, including system designers, developers, web specialists, network engineers and database designers. He has also designed and managed IT systems, from initial architecture concept to detail implementation based on different technologies including biometrics, smart cards and POS devices, online/offline data synchronization, Internet and Virtual Private Networks, cloud computing, virtualized servers, multi-tier architectures.
Mr. Quintero has BSc in Computer Science from American University and a Post-Graduate in Computer Science from George Washington University.
Iqtidar Hussain
Islamabad, Pakistan
Country Manager
Mr. Hussain is associated with STRAP Consulting as Country Manager for Pakistan. He brings 25 years of experience in finance, information technology, retail energy, banking, and project management environments. He has served five years with Deloitte Touché Tohmatsu International, 10 years with the largest private sector bank, Askari Commercial Bank as Vice President and 10 years in leadership roles at GDF SUEZ Energy International. He has several certifications in IT, Project Management and Business Communication from NUST and LUMS.
Mr. Hussain has BSc from Punjab University.