Elaine Edgcomb has served as Strategic Advisor since stepping down from the leadership of FIELD in 2012. Ms. Edgcomb’s work with FIELD began in 1998, when, as a co-founder, she took on the role of co-director. In her work at FIELD, Elaine led the development of the program’s major projects and programs. She has also authored or co-authored numerous other publications for FIELD, including Scaling up Microenterprise Services, The Informal Economy: Latino Enterprises at the Margins and The Informal Economy: Making It In Rural America, and Improving Microenterprise Training and Technical Assistance. Ms. Edgcomb is also the author and editor of works on evaluation practice, institutional development, financial analysis, and microenterprise strategies implemented both internationally and in the United States. With more than 25 years in international development, she has experience in monitoring and evaluating microenterprise programs, training management staff, and in developing practitioner-oriented materials to support program implementation.
Before joining FIELD, Ms. Edgcomb served as the founding Executive Director of the Small Enterprise Education and Promotion (SEEP) Network, an association of more than 50 US and Canadian nonprofit organizations that support small business and microenterprise development in the developing world. As a consultant to the Self-Employment Learning Project at the Aspen Institute, she had principal responsibility for guiding the project’s case study research on organizational strategies and issues in US microenterprise. Ms. Edgcomb’s experience also includes work with Catholic Relief Services, where she directed the planning and evaluation of socioeconomic development and relief programs in 13 countries in Central America and the Caribbean. She has served on the Board of Directors of the SEEP Network, Pro Mujer International and the Association for Enterprise Opportunity. Ms. Edgcomb holds a Master’s Degree in Latin American Studies from Georgetown University and a B.A. in History and Spanish from Seton Hall University.