Thank you for visiting my profile! My values: Moral and Ethical Values, Fairness, Integrity, LoyaltyMy strengths: pragmatism, detail orientation, highly organized, high frustration tolerance, excellent education, cooperative management style, ability to prioritize and manage tasks, customer orientation, intercultural competences, several languagesShort bio:Dirk Lebe has a cooperative banking, regional development banking and microfinance background and has been working for more than 20 years in the financial sector in Europe, Africa and Asia. In his last long-term project, targeting 165,000 cocoa farmers, loans to farmers increased ten-fold within three years. Dirk works currently as financial services specialist/consultant on a global level, thinking creatively around challenges in various projects, e.g. transferring “classical” banking knowledge into the agricultural sector. Dirk holds a PhD in economics.What people say about my work:"You [Dirk Lebe] opened my eyes that access to finance does not have to mean access to credit, but can well mean making savings easier in the first place. Today I am convinced that this is the way to go when working with the poorer cohort of the society and that your merit." (Martin S. from one of the donors of a project implemented)"I must say I am absolutely thrilled, both from a development practitioner's and academic viewpoint, pertaining in particular to intervention strategies for farmers with different farm sizes and levels of professionalism." (Prof. Hans-Dieter S., commenting on one of my reports)"... a breakthrough to overcome farmer's access to finance problems. ..." (From the review of the final report for one of our donor projects, when talking about the access to finance component, I have led.)"Dirk, if you are gone one day, we need to hire 3 or 4 people to replace you." (Barbara W., direct supervisor)"It pays out to have with Dr. Dirk Lebe a banker in [our project] to come up with game-changing innovations in Access to Finance." (Manfred B., direct supervisor)"None of the other reports have been as direct and concise with objectives and actions as yours. Thank you so much. It definitely gives us plenty to do, with a clear paved direction." (A Junior staff in a project)