I?m happy to introduce NextBillion ally Brian McBrearity as our latest guest blogger. Brian is a reformed Wall Street asset manager ? now he?s working in the SME development and financial services field as he tries to apply his finance background to serve the BOP. He recently accepted a 3-month position in Lusaka with FINCA, and has generously agreed to post weekly about his experiences from the field. His first post will appear on this page later today.

Brian McBrearity is a nine-year Wall Street/asset management veteran who spent most of 2004 working in East Africa, where he taught math to underprivileged primary and secondary students in a rural village school in northern Tanzania. Following this work he joined Eco Inn Experiences in the fall of 2005. The prior nine years were spent in the global equity portfolio management and the new business development groups of Sanford C. Bernstein (now part of Alliance Capital, a large New York-based asset manager). In that position, he acquired extensive knowledge of U.S. and international equity portfolio management, brand management, product development, accounting, and operations. Brian holds an MBA from Columbia?s Graduate School of Business and a BA in Economics from Boston College.

Welcome, Brian!