The Children's Investment Fund Foundation Announces Expansion of Leadership Team

LONDON, July 15, 2013 /PRNewswire/ --

The Children's Investment Fund Foundation (CIFF) today announces the strengthening of its leadership team as it undertakes a major expansion of its activities. Jamie Cooper-Hohn, who remains Non-Executive Chair, is joined as CEO by Michael Anderson who most recently was the UK Prime Minister's Special Envoy on the UN Development Goals.

Michael will join CIFF on September 1^st from the UK Department for International Development, where he held a wide range of senior roles over 10 years, including a posting in India and, most recently, working directly with Prime Minister David Cameron in preparing for this year's G8. He also brings to CIFF a legal background, private sector experience, and very much shares CIFF's commitment to evidence based interventions, rigorous data driven programming and accountability.

As Non-Executive Chair, Jamie, who has led CIFF since co-founding it in 2003, will continue to facilitate development of CIFF's strategy with the Board and the CEO. She will also devote more time to strengthening CIFF's links with other global development leaders to enable greater international co-ordination in addressing the most important issues for children. Jamie's immediate priority will be to widen and improve understanding of how undernutrition is holding back health, education and economic outcomes. She will also work to further mobilize the global leadership to take necessary action to resolve the issue.

CIFF has made very significant contributions towards improving child survival, learning gains and nutritional outcomes. Over the past four years, CIFF has increased its investments significantly, reaching $87million in annual investment in 2012. In June 2013, in partnership with the UK and Brazilian governments, CIFF led the launch of a seven-year initiative to tackle undernutrition. CIFF announced a commitment of $700 million over the next seven years towards the initiative.

Michael Anderson, CIFF's incoming CEO, said: "I am honoured and excited to join the CIFF team.  The commitment of the Founders, Chris and Jamie, to improving the lives of the world's most vulnerable children is inspiring -- and one, which I share.  CIFF is dedicated to making the biggest possible impact with limited resources by adhering to rigorous evidence, asking hard questions, and bringing a business lens to tough problems. These are features which I have emphasised in my own work at DFID in recent years, and where I feel I can make a real contribution."

Jamie Cooper Hohn, Chair of CIFF's Board, said: "Our work in child survival and undernutrition has given us a clear view of what is needed to achieve change at a global scale. It has underlined the importance of CIFF's core values of results impact and accountability for children. It has also highlighted a need within CIFF for additional talent and experience in the decade ahead for the foundation to be even more influential and impactful."

"We have great confidence that Michael has the global leadership, political savvy, development sector acumen and readiness to lead CIFF through this new period of growth."

About CIFF

The Children's Investment Fund Foundation (http://www.ciff.org) is an independent, philanthropic organisation, which aims to demonstrably improve the lives of children in developing countries by achieving large-scale, sustainable impact. We believe that every child deserves to survive, thrive and mature into adulthood in a supportive and safe environment.

CIFF invests where the evidence indicates that there is potential to make the greatest difference. We expect to affect decision-making about resource allocation and policy at the highest levels of influence, and to shape the implementation of large scale programmes in key geographies. It focuses on four Priority Impact Areas:

• Child survival
• Hunger Alleviation and Nutrition
• Educational Attainment
• Climate

With an overarching devotion to high-impact funding for children, there are three distinctive features of CIFF's approach when selecting and managing projects with our partners.

Clarity around success - When deciding to invest, we articulate clearly the impact we aim to achieve, how this will be sustained after CIFF's exit, and how an investment will advance our efforts to achieve positive and transformational change globally.

Explicit use of data - CIFF focuses on the areas where data tells us that we have opportunities to dramatically improve large numbers of children's lives. Then, we use reliable evidence to monitor our progress toward ultimate success.

Managed investing - Much of the evidence used in development work is generated in relatively controlled settings. Translating these insights into impact at scale requires commitment to a process of trial, monitoring and course correction. CIFF stays engaged throughout each investment until quality thresholds are delivered and the programme is adequately institutionalised.

Contact: [email protected], +44(0)20-7440-2357

SOURCE The Children's Investment Fund Foundation