Robert Fries

Technical Managing Director, Financial Services & Integrated Rural Development Portfolio

Robert Fries is a senior manager with more than 17 years of experience developing, managing and providing technical support to international development programs. As Technical Managine Director for the Financial Services & Integrated Rural Development portfolio, Mr. Fries provides management and technical support to projects in our Financial Services and Rural Development portfolio and helps to identify and disseminate best practices and products to overseas projects. Under the USAID-funded AMAP contract, he completed a study and framework paper entitled “Value Chains and Their Significance for Addressing the Rural Finance Challenge.” He has developed and delivered training on incorporating value chain analysis into financial market assessments for USAID and SEEP. He also presented a paper at the USAID-sponsored International Conference on Rural Finance Best Practices in 2003; co-authored the publication “Making Rural Financial Institutions Sustainable,” a guidebook on fundamentals of planning, organizing and operating rural financial institutions to assure sustainability; and prepared “Basic Guidelines For Effective Rural Finance Projects,” an article on the World Bank’s web-based Guide to Developing Agricultural Markets & Agro-Enterprises. Mr. Fries serves as a board member of two financial institutions, Agrocapital, a rural and microfinance institution in Bolivia, and Frontiers, a wholesale lender to microfinance institutions in Central Asia. He earned his master’s degree in public and international affairs at the University of Pittsburgh and his bachelor’s in political science at Boston College.