Leadership Team
Over 20 years of experience designing and implementing innovative programs that incorporate public sector
reform, private sector growth, and human capacity development has made CARANA a leader among firms. CARANA
employs more than 200 staff members in Arlington, VA and in 50 countries around the world. Profiles of CARANA's
senior officers follow.
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Board of Directors |
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Eduardo Tugendhat, President and CEO |
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R. William Phelps, Executive Vice President, Corporate Services |
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Ron Ivey, Executive Vice President, Professional Operations |
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Robert Otto, Director |
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Joyjit Deb Roy, Senior Vice President |
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Santiago Sedaca, Senior Vice President |
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Peter Boone, Vice President |
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Maria V. Braslavskaya, Vice President |
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Ann M. Casanova, Vice President |
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Roman S. Ponos, Vice President |
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| EDUARDO TUGENDHAT - President and CEO |
| Mr. Tugendhat is one of the founders of CARANA Corporation, having established the Washington area office in 1988. He has been President and CEO since 2000, overseeing CARANA's worldwide consulting and project implementation activities. Prior to joining CARANA, he spent eleven years with Arthur D. Little, Inc. as market manager for the Caribbean and Central America, and as a core member of the Economic Development Unit. Mr. Tugendhat holds an M.A. in Ibero-American studies from University of Wisconsin, and a B.A. from Harvard University. He is fluent in Spanish and conversant in Russian, with applied experience in over 60 countries. |
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| R. WILLIAM PHELPS - Executive Vice President, Corporate Services |
| Mr. Phelps has been with CARANA since 1996. As CARANA's Executive Vice
President for Global Operations, he has both corporate and project responsibilities, currently managing
the Certified International Professional Accounting program in Russia and the Balkan countries. His corporate
responsibilities include contracts, finance and accounting, information and communication technology, and
human resources. Internationally, he was director of South Urals Privatization Center in Russia, the Privatization
Operations Center in Romania and CARANA's privatization project in Egypt. Mr. Phelps is a certified public
accountant and fraud examiner. He holds an M.S. in accounting from Arizona State University. |
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| RON IVEY – Executive Vice President, Professional Operations |
| Ron has more than 30 years’ experience in international consulting with division, practice and project management responsibility in major U.S. accounting and consulting companies. Most recently, he served as senior vice president of Chemonics International, managing the Asia Division. He has successfully executed more than 125 long- and short-term technical assignments, primarily in private-sector development, public-sector reform, and design of public-private partnerships in developing countries. He has worked extensively in Latin America, Eastern Europe, the former Soviet Union, and Africa and more recently in Asia and the Middle East. He has an M.A. in economics from the University of Virginia and a B.S.B.A in business administration from the University of Denver. He speaks fluent Spanish, working French, and some Russian. |
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| ROBERT OTTO - Director |
| Mr. Otto joined CARANA in 1993 and has served in various capacities, including consultant, team leader, project manager, vice president, and most recently, executive vice president responsible for global practice and business development. Currently, he serves as a senior corporate advisor and member of CARANA’s Board of Directors. He is also a team leader managing information and communications technology projects. A former chief private-sector officer for USAID, he has worked in over 50 countries in the former Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, Africa, Asia, Central and South America and the Caribbean. Mr. Otto holds an M.S. in management from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
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| JOYJIT DEB ROY - Senior Vice President |
| Mr. Deb Roy joined CARANA in 2003 to manage the firm's practice in Africa and Asia. He presently oversees CARANA’s trade hub projects in Western and Southern Africa. He brings extensive experience conducting a broad range of macroeconomic studies in Eastern Europe, Middle East, Central Asia and South Asia, and has analyzed competitiveness and firm-level operations globally. He has worked in over 30 countries with a variety of donors, including USAID, TDA, the World Bank, ADB and DfID. He holds graduate degrees in public administration from the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University and in history from Delhi University. Mr. Deb Roy is a native speaker of Hindi and Bengali.
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| SANTIAGO SEDACA - Senior Vice
President |
| Mr. Sedaca is CARANA’s chief of party under USAID’s Red Productiva project in Ecuador, which advises the Ecuadoran government and the private sector to develop key productive sectors. He was previously CARANA's vice president for the Latin America and Caribbean region, where he successfully designed and managed USAID programs in international trade, competitiveness, enterprise development, micro-, small-, and medium-enterprise, and cluster development, including USAID’s Colombia Enterprise Development Project and the Guyana Trade and Investment Support Project. Before joining CARANA in 2003, he served the Salt Lake Olympic Committee as director of operations planning and management, where he oversaw drastic changes in the Games' operational plans following the 9/11 attacks. Mr. Sedaca holds an M.S. in Foreign Service from Georgetown University and a B.A. in economics and political studies from Gordon College. He is fluent in Spanish.
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| PETER BOONE – Vice President |
| Mr. Boone joined CARANA in 2007. He has led more than 50 economic development projects in a total of 40 countries and in more than a dozen U.S. states and regions, specializing in economic competitiveness and value-chain development. Mr. Boone has been a principal economist at SRI International, an assistant secretary for Papua New Guinea’s Department of Agriculture, an economist at the World Bank, and a volunteer for the U.S. Peace Corps in Togo. He holds an M.S. in International Economics from Cornell University and a B.A. in American Studies from Colby College. He is fluent in French and speaks conversational Mina (Togo) and Melanesian Pidgin.
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| MARIA V. BRASLAVSKAYA - Vice President |
| Ms. Braslavskaya joined CARANA in 1994 to work on USAID's Small Scale Privatization Project in Kazakhstan. She has been with CARANA’s headquarters in Arlington since 1999. Ms. Braslavskaya is responsible for contract administration from the award to close out. She develops internal controls to maintain compliance with all contractual requirements and provides guidance and interpretation on federal and other clients’ rules and regulations to project offices and the headquarters. She also oversees implementation of procurement and grant award policies and procedures for CARANA’s home office and global operations. Ms. Braslavskaya holds a Master’s Certificate in government contracting from George Washington University School of Business, a M.A. in international affairs from Kazakh State University of International Relations, and Associate Degree in Accounting from the International School of Business. She is fluent in Russian.
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| ANN M. CASANOVA - Vice President |
| Ms. Casanova joined CARANA in 2004, where she leads international trade policy, trade capacity building and financial services programs, including analyses of informal financial flows and trade settlements in West Africa, and opportunities for services trade liberalization in Guyana. She is presently leading a regional Mobile Banking/Mobile Payments project in West Africa to identify and overcome legal and regulatory constraints to cross border, multicurrency, mobile phone transactions. Before CARANA, Ms. Casanova served as both executive and deputy director of the Free Trade Area of the Americas secretariat. In 2001, she was recruited by the Inter-American Development Bank to provide direct support to the FTAA Negotiating Groups on Agriculture and Government Procurement, inter alia. She is a member of the Florida bar and is active in the American Bar Association's International Trade Committee. Ms. Casanova holds a J.D. and a B.A. from the University of Miami. She speaks fluent Spanish and working French. |
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| ROMAN S. PONOS - Vice President |
| Mr. Ponos joined CARANA in 2002. He is responsible for strategic planning
and operational management of human resources, including headquarters recruitment, professional development,
training, organizational development, compensation guidance, employee relations, benefits and insurances.
He also develops and implements corporate policies and procedures, oversees domestic and global operational
management issues and is responsible for managing a comprehensive, global corporate risk management strategy.
Previously, he was a regional manager for a multi-year, multi-million dollar USAID Health Care Finance
Reform Program in Ukraine and Moldova. Mr. Ponos earned an MBA in international management from Thunderbird,
The Garvin School of International Management and a B.A. in international affairs from The George Washington
University. He is fluent in Ukrainian and proficient in Russian and German. |
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