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Below you will find two recommendations, one from the Chair of the Anthropology department at UC Irvine and the director of The Institute of Money Technology and Financial Inclusion, The second is from the former manager of the SPARC Innovation lab at the Mayo Clinic.
November 12, 2009
To whom it concerns:
I write with enthusiasm on behalf of Melissa Cliver. I have known of Melissa’s work for about a year. She is currently conducting research under the auspices of the Institute for Money, Technology and Financial Inclusion, which I direct.
The Institute was established in 2008 with the support of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to support innovative research on everyday practices and meanings around money in the developing world, with an eye toward assessing how the world’s poorest people save and store their money. The aim is to provide detailed, ethnographic data on poor people’ money management in order to inform the design of new systems, possibly using mobile technologies, to enhance poor people’s savings and money transfer more cheaply than wire services or traditional banks. It is the only such research institute that adopts an anthropological or ethnographic approach to understanding the lives of the world’s poorest people with regard to money and technology.
Melissa applied to the first Call for Proposals issued by the Institute. That first call resulted in over 50 applications from all over the world. After a highly competitive peer-review process, Melissa’s proposal was one of 17 that was funded. She is currently at the mid-point of a very exciting 12-month project on the different standards and objects of value used by coffee farmers in Oaxaca, Mexico. In collaboration with the Financial Alliance for Sustainable Trade, Melissa’s project, “Follow the bean: Navigating Value Exchange and Vulnerability with Farmers and their Stakeholders” is acquiring original and fascinating data on Oaxacan farmers’ and their families’ understandings of what money is, where value comes from, how their coffee grows and produces wealth for them, and how the interlocking cycles of the seasons, religious events, market transactions and life-course stages shape and structure assessments of value and possibilities for enhancing livelihood. The result will be a project that seriously questions top-down approaches to development and the provision of financial services in favor of participant-centered design and community-based action research.
Melissa’s project is unique among those the Institute funded in that it has adopted an explicitly participatory framework: rather than coming in as the outside observer or
interviewer, Melissa has created innovative settings in which her research subjects become active players and storytellers in the co-design of the research and in the direction taken by the researcher. With drawings, group discussions, photography and film, Melissa is creating a rich archive of her interactions with her subjects that will become useful for creating design concepts that will dislodge some of the common assumptions in the development and philanthropic community about access to financial services; assumptions like, “all the poor need is access to a savings account.” Melissa is showing, in contrast, how a participant-centered project will necessitate changing the terms of the discussion, away from concepts and terms like “savings” – for how can we save if we never have “enough?” – and toward participants’ own concepts like “livelihood” and the virtues of community, family and faith.
In group discussions with the cohort of researchers funded by the Institute, Melissa has demonstrated herself to be a true thought leader in this space. She is not overbearing in that leadership, however – far from it. Instead, she has the ability to gently move a conversation along in a more productive direction, to hear what others are saying and integrate diverse perspectives, to bring together disparate voices and arguments into a fruitful synthesis. She also produces beautiful presentations using her photographic and artistic skills.
Melissa Cliver is an excellent candidate for your fellowship. She has a unique skill set. She is acquiring more of the tools of social science research while maintaining her commitment to the design of inclusive technologies that address people’s everyday financial needs. I recommend her in the strongest possible terms, and without reservation.
Please do not hesitate to contact me if you would like any additional information.
Sincerely yours,
Bill Maurer
(949) 824 7602
Professor and Chair, Department of Anthropology
Director, Institute for Money, Technology and Financial Inclusion
February 2009
I am writing this letter in full support and recommendation of Melissa Cliver I had the pleasure of getting to know Melissa during her graduate internship with the Mayo Clinic SPARC Innovation Program. She contributed significantly to two distinctly different research and design efforts we conducted during the summer of 2008.
The first project looked into the creation of a unique 'Personal Health Record' for patients. The second project explored opportunities to improve the patient experience around "informed consent" in both cases, Melissa brought to the work her own style of appreciative inquiry (always asking the questions that needed to be asked), as well as her creative and generative approach to research (offering a beautiful and compelling interpretation of data). Throughout these projects. Melissa showed a great deal of initiative, often having to navigate a complex clinical environment independently, and an ability to handle two very challenging projects simultaneously. Each project resulted in extraordinary findings and insights into patient needs.
As a teammate, Melissa's colleagues that summer spoke highly of her and her contributions to the work and in general, Melissa is a wonderful and insightful person to have around you. She always offers new and unique perspectives on any discussion. I believe she would be an asset to any company or organization that is looking for someone with the right combination of creative spirit and analytical capabilities.
Sincerely,
Matt Maleska
Former Design Manager
SPARC Innovation Program
Mayo Clinic
Rochester, MN
(Cell) 203-843-0287 |
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