Rebecca Rouse

Rebecca is the Director of Financial Inclusion at Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA), a research and policy non-profit that discovers and promotes effective solutions to global poverty problems. She returned to IPA in June 2016 after being a consultant at the MIF’s Access to Finance Unit for 3 years.

At MIF she coordinated MIF’s Regional Program on Remittances and Savings and published many reports, one of them entitled  “Remittance Recipients in Guatemala: A Socioeconomic Profile” (with Lukas Keller) which is undoubtedly one of the best profiles of remittance recipients found in the literature on the subject.

Prior to joining the MIF, Rebecca was a research manager at IPA, where she directed a portfolio of studies testing the effectiveness of savings products and financial education interventions on low-income households in the United States. She was a Project Manager, Marketing and Financial Education with Banco de Ahorro y Crédito Unión in Dominican Republic and a Fellow at the Institute of Latin American Studies at Columbia University.

Between 2005 and 2007, she conducted research on financial inclusion and remittances with the Inter-American Dialogue, as a Program Assistant, in Remittances and Rural Development alongside Remittance Expert Manuel Orozco.

Rebecca holds a master’s degree in public administration from Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs, and a bachelor’s in political science from Bryn Mawr College.