Suneeta Kaimal
President and Chief Executive Officer
Suneeta joined NRGI’s predecessor organization, the Revenue Watch Institute (RWI) in 2009 as the deputy director responsible for regional and country engagements across Africa, Asia-Pacific, Eurasia, Latin America, and the Middle East and North Africa. Following the merger between RWI and the Natural Resource Charter in 2013, Suneeta became chief operating officer, ensuring NRGI’s strategy and approach was relevant, demand-driven, and evidence-based. Overseeing the leadership and senior management teams, she guided the translation of the strategy into innovative, impactful thematic and regional programs and supported NRGI’s institutional effectiveness and sustainability. Suneeta served as interim president and chief executive officer in 2020, surmounting the strategic and operational challenges of the global pandemic.
Suneeta is the secretary/treasurer of the board of directors of The International Center for Not-For-Profit Law, working to improve the legal environment for civil society, philanthropy, and public participation around the world. She was the first female civil society chair of the Open Government Partnership, an organization of reformers inside and outside of government from more than 75 countries and served on the steering committee for eight years. Suneeta was the first chair of the global council of Publish What You Pay, a civil society movement of more than 1000 organizations working to improve natural resource governance. She is also a founding board member of Roots of Health, a local NGO focused on improving the health of women and girls and their communities, in the Philippines.
Suneeta holds a master’s in international affairs from the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University, and a bachelor of arts from Duke University, where she was a Hart Leadership Fellow.
Luis M. García
Chief Financial and Administrative Officer
A member of senior management at NRGI, Luis leads the support services team and performs administrative oversight. Luis’ responsibilities include risk management, compliance, IT and human resources.
Luis joined NRGI in April 2020 after three years as chief financial officer at Water For People.
He started his extensive career in finance as a treasurer and accountant for two regional associations in Spain. After working as a financial advisor at Bilbao Vizcaya Bank, Luis transitioned to the non-for-profit sector.
He didicated more than 20 years of his career to serving those who suffer hunger or lack access to clean water in three international sections at Action Against Hunger, as well as the charity Water For People.
Luis began his Action Against Hunger career as the financial and administrative director in Haiti, from 1997 to 1999. He then led financial oversight of all Madrid-managed missions worldwide as the field operation finances director, a position he held until the end of 2005.
In 2006, Luis joined Action Against Hunger USA as director of grant compliance and field financial controller, based in New York. In 2012, Luis assumed the chief financial officer role with Action Against Hunger USA.
Luis is a native of Bilbao, Spain. He earned degrees in economics from universities in Bilbao and Lille. He has also taken Ph.D. courses in international economy and development from the Basque Country University in Spain. He speaks five languages fluently.
Matthew Genasci
Interim Senior Director for Regional Programs
Matthew oversees the organization’s work across the Africa, Asia-Pacific, Eurasia, Latin America and Middle East and North Africa regions, spanning over a dozen countries.
Matthew is a lawyer and policy advisor focusing on extractive sector law and policy, with special expertise on mining and petroleum legal and fiscal regimes, contract negotiations and financial modeling. He previously headed the law and economics team at the Natural Resource Governance Institute (NRGI). He has served as both legal and financial advisor to a number of government bodies through the negotiation and renegotiation of complex investment agreements, the design of major mineral rights tenders and oil licensing rounds, the drafting of petroleum and mining legislation, and various policy reform processes. He has also worked with international organizations, research institutes and development agencies on a variety of research and training projects. Matthew has experience working in Armenia, China, D.R. Congo, France, Ghana, Guinea, Guyana, Kyrgyzstan, Liberia, Mali, Mongolia, Mozambique, Myanmar, Niger, Nigeria, Peru, Philippines, Sierra Leone and Tanzania.
From 2003 to 2005, Matthew was international and corporate tax counsel to the U.S. Senate Finance Committee. Prior to that, he advised a number of large multinational companies as an attorney specializing in complex transactional tax matters at a Washington D.C. law firm.
Matthew has a J.D. from Stanford Law School and an M.A. in International Relations & International Economics from the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS).
Lee Bailey
Communications Director
Based in London, Lee has previously worked in communications for the United Nations Development Programme, the United Nations Office of the Special Envoy for Haiti and a public health technology company. Before working in international development, he was a New York-based business journalist and a Boston-based management consultant.
Lee holds a B.A. in history from the University of Pennsylvania and a M.Sc. in development studies from the London School of Economics and Political Science.
Juan Luis Dammert
Latin America Director
Over his career, Juan Luis’ work has covered issues of resource governance and environmental change in Latin America. Before joining NRGI, he worked for Oxfam in Peru and as an adjunct professor at Pontificia Universidad Catolica del Peru (PUCP).
Prior to his doctoral studies, Juan Luis worked for the Peruvian Society for Environmental Law (SPDA). He has led and published research for Universidad del Pacifico (Peru), the Wildlife Conservation Society and the Group for the Analysis of Development (GRADE) and participated in comparative research on issues including land conflict, deforestation, global environmental change, infrastructure projects and the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI).
Juan Luis earned a B.A. in sociology from PUCP and an M.A. and Ph.D. in geography from the Graduate School of Geography at Clark University in Massachusetts.
Galib Efendiev
Eurasia Director
Galib provides guidance to consolidate local monitoring activities and helps to manage local research, monitoring, advocacy and technical assistance in Eurasia. Priority countries for NRGI in the region include Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Mongolia and Russia, with smaller-scale activities in Georgia, Kyrgyz Republic and Ukraine.
Before joining NRGI, Galib worked at the Open Society Institute as director of the transparency of oil revenues and public finance program and as head of the grants department. He joined OSI in Azerbaijan at its founding in 1996, helping to manage OSI's first programs in Azerbaijan and serving as deputy director for several years. The TORPF program continues to collaborate with NRGI as a leader in facilitating civil society involvement with EITI implementation in Azerbaijan; NGO efforts for budget and expenditure transparency; and oil industry and IFI activity monitoring, among other projects.
He holds a B.S. from Rutgers University, with majors in Eastern European studies and finance and management. He speaks Russian and Turkish.
Alexandra Gillies
Advisor
Alexandra Gillies is an expert on oil sector corruption and the author of the upcoming book Crude Intentions: How Oil Sector Corruption Contaminates the World. Other recent work has focused on the Nigerian oil sector, national oil companies, commodity trading, and promoting transparency standards including the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI). She has authored academic articles on related topics and co-edited the volume Smart Aid for African Development (Lynne Reiner, 2009).
Alexandra holds a Ph.D. in international relations from the University of Cambridge where she researched the political economy of the Nigerian oil sector. She spent 2008 in Nigeria as a Fulbright Fellow. Prior to joining NRGI, she consulted for the World Bank, DFID, USAID and several political risk firms. She served as assistant director of the Program of African Studies at Northwestern University. Alexandra also holds degrees from the University of Ghana and Emory University.
At NRGI, Alexandra manages the organization’s anticorruption programs and advises on strategy development, research products and advocacy campaigns. Follow her on Twitter @acgillies.
Laury Haytayan
Middle East and North Africa Director
Laury sets the strategic trajectory of the Middle East and North Africa region in accordance with the organizations’ mission and vision. She represents NRGI in the region and she oversees the implementation of programs and projects. Prior to becoming the director, Laury was the MENA senior officer in charge of the media and parliamentary capacity building programs. She played a significant role in establishing the Middle East and North Africa Regional Knowledge Hub Course in Lebanon in 2014.
Previously, Laury was executive director of Beirut-based Arab Region Parliamentarians Against Corruption (ARPAC), where she worked with parliamentarians and civil society groups to strengthen legislators' oversight and legislative capacities. Laury was invited by the Carter Center to help monitor the first Tunisian elections after the fall of Ben Ali. Prior to working with ARPAC, she was in charge of regional grassroots projects in Bahrain, Yemen and Saudi Arabia focused on promoting the role of women in development and policy-making. She also worked as grant manager, advocacy specialist and trainer for several international nongovernmental organizations, including IREX, ACDI/VOCA and the U.N. Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia. There, she mainly focused on civil society democracy campaigns in Lebanon and Iraq.
Laury also was lead author on an Israel case study and the co-author of a Norway case study in NRGI’s Political Parties and Natural Resource Governance: A Practical Guide for Developing Resource Policy Positions publication, released in April 2018.
Laury holds a master’s in Middle East politics from the University of Exeter and a B.A. in communication arts from the Lebanese American University. She speaks Arabic, French, English and Armenian.
Patrick Heller
Advisor
Patrick has worked on legal reform and governance initiatives in the developing world for more than 15 years for organizations including USAID, the U.S. State Department, the Asian Development Bank, Creative Associates International and The International Center for Transitional Justice. He is a research affiliate with the Program on Energy and Sustainable Development at Stanford University.
Patrick manages NRGI’s legal and economic program team, which leads the organization’s work on legislative and regulatory reform, natural resource contracts, tax policy and macroeconomic management of extractive industries. He contributes extensively to NRGI’s programs of technical assistance to governments and civil society organizations throughout the world, and to NRGI’s capacity development efforts. He has facilitated courses on oil, gas and mining legal frameworks with partner institutions including the University of Oxford, Columbia University, Gadjah Mada University (Indonesia), the Catholic University of Central Africa (Cameroon) and Externado University (Colombia). Patrick’s research work focuses heavily on the governance and management of state-owned oil and mining companies, oil sector institutional structure and the analysis of extractive industry contracts.
He holds a law degree from Stanford University and a master’s in international relations from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.
Liz McGrath
Research and Data Director
Based in London, Liz oversaw NRGI’s Resource Governance Index (RGI). Liz oversees major organizational research, data and analysis, provide oversight on our data strategy and projects.
She previously worked for the Mo Ibrahim Foundation and most recently served for five years as the director of the Ibrahim Index of African Governance (IIAG), an annually produced statistical assessment of the quality of governance in all 54 African countries.
Prior to joining the Mo Ibrahim Foundation, Liz worked for Amnesty International UK and the British Foreign & Commonwealth Office, as well as with national human rights organizations in Lagos, Nigeria, and Bogotá, Colombia.
Liz grew up in Ghana and holds B.Sc. and M.A. degrees in economics and international development from the University of Bath and SOAS University of London.
Carlos Monge
Advisor
From 2002 to 2005, Carlos was head of citizen monitoring and promotion of participation and then head of communications for Grupo Propuesta Ciudadana (GPC), an institution dedicated to promoting decentralization as a participative process. He is the author of several publications on issues related to rural development, social movements, decentralization, citizen participation and conflicts generated by extractive industries.
In addition to his position with NRGI, he is also a senior researcher for Peru's Center for the Study and Promotion of Development, desco. He works on extractive sector transparency issues with numerous civil society organizations and has been a member of the international board of the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative.
Carlos holds a degree in anthropology from the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru and Ph.D. in history from the University of Miami.
Silas Olan'g
Africa Co-Director
Prior to joining NRGI in 2009, Silas spent three years leading Oxfam International's advocacy and knowledge sharing initiative in Tanzania. He has also served as capacity building advisor with the Netherlands Development Organization, head of the planning department for the Ngara District Council in northwest Tanzania and manager of the European Development Fund-Micro Project Program in the Lake Victoria region.
Silas holds an advanced diploma in economic planning from the Institute of Development Management Mzumbe in Tanzania, where he has lectured on economic planning, and a M.S. in agricultural development and rural finance from the Development and Project Planning Center at the University of Bradford.
Amir Shafaie
Legal and Economic Programs Director
Amir leads NRGI’s portfolio of research, policy analysis, technical assistance, capacity development and advocacy related to legal and economic issues. Amir works closely with his team to support the work of NRGI regional and country teams in areas such as legal reform and economic analysis relevant to good governance of the oil, gas and mining sectors, while also contributing to the strategic direction of NRGI more broadly.
Prior to joining NRGI, Amir was a managing associate in the energy, infrastructure and project finance team of a leading international law firm based in London. Amir's pro bono experience includes assisting the International Senior Lawyers Project in advising the Liberian government on a port concession.
Amir has degrees in history and law, both from the University of California, Berkeley. He also studied international relations at Sciences Po. Amir is fluent in English, French and Farsi.
Evelyne Tsague
Africa Co-Director
Prior to joining NRGI, Evelyne worked at Catholic Relief Services in Cameroon program as human rights/extractives industries projects manager, with a focus on extractive industries transparency, anti-trafficking and legal assistance in Cameroonian prisons. She also oversaw the implementation of grants and financial management for CRS in Chad. Previously, Evelyne worked as human rights legal advisor and trainer at Justice and Peace Commission of Yaoundé. She has also worked as a research assistant with IPIS, a research unit of the Catholic University of Central Africa in Yaoundé.
At NRGI, Evelyne is responsible for the development and support of NRGI regional activities, with an emphasis on Francophone countries. Her work includes strengthening monitoring activities and initiating new research, grant-making, advocacy and technical assistance projects. She is also responsible for identifying research, capacity building and technical assistance needs at the local, national and regional levels. She collaborates with NRGI staff and outside experts to address these issues.
Evelyne holds a high diploma in human rights and humanitarian action from the Catholic University of Central Africa in Yaoundé, Cameroon, and an inter-university diploma from Nantes University.
Erica Westenberg
Governance Programs Director
Erica leads NRGI’s portfolio of research, technical assistance, capacity development and advocacy on government and private sector policies and public oversight mechanisms that shape extractive sector governance. She is a lawyer and provides policy advice in resource-rich countries worldwide, as well as in international multi-stakeholder initiatives. Erica oversees a team of experts based in NRGI’s global and regional offices and contributes to the strategic direction of the organization. She is also a member of the board of the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI).
Prior to joining NRGI, Erica was in the energy and infrastructure group at Skadden, where she advised clients on energy, natural resource and infrastructure projects and public-private partnerships in Asia, Latin America, the Middle East and the U.S. Her pro bono projects included work on parliamentary oversight of extractive industry contracts, as well as engagement through the International Senior Lawyers Project advising the government of Liberia on the African Charter on Democracy, Elections and Governance.
Erica holds a J.D. from Harvard Law School, a M.Sc. in development management from the London School of Economics and a B.A. in government from Harvard College. At Harvard, she received a Chayes International Public Service Fellowship to work on legal and judicial reform in Europe and Central Asia at the World Bank.
Laura Whitwell
Fundraising Director
Laura leads NRGI’s fundraising team and is responsible for relationships with the organization’s governmental and philanthropic donors.
Before joining NRGI, Laura served as the U.K. director of Self Help Africa (SHA), an agricultural development NGO. Over the course of nearly ten years at SHA, Laura served in progressively more senior roles, including programme funding manager and head of operations (U.K.). She was the program funding lead, exceeding annual targets of over $30 million and responsible for developing and maintaining effective relationships with a range of grant-makers including international foundations, government donors and high net worth individuals. She also led the pursuit of non-traditional income streams including contracting, tenders, consultancy and social enterprise.
Among her recent notable achievements, Laura secured a €22 million contract with the European Commission to establish and manage a competitive grant mechanism for Kenyan agribusinesses and won a £5 million contract from the highly competitive U.K. Department for International Development’s BRACED resilience program involving multiple partners in the U.K., Burkina Faso and Germany.
Laura holds a certificate in fundraising management from the Institute of Fundraising.