Cécile Lapenu oversees Cerise’s human resources and strategy, project management, and the relationships with the partners. She works in particular in social audit of the investment funds, social audit, mentoring and training of microfinance institutions and networks and coordination of research. Cécile brings extensive field experience coaching, mentoring and providing direct technical assistance to organizations in the areas of social strategy, environmental performance and ESG risk assessment. Under her stewardship, Cerise has pioneered and helped mainstream the concept of social performance management, facilitated the emergence of the Universal Standards for Social and Environmental Performance Management and created the free SPI social audit tools using a bottom up, collaborative approach. The SPI4 is the most widely used social audit tool in the microfinance sector. Cécile Lapenu was member of the Board of the Social Performance Task Force for 10 years and was chairwoman of the Board of the European microfinance platform (e-MFP) in 2013. Before joining CERISE in 2001, Cécile Lapenu was a post-doctoral fellow at IFPRI (International Food Policy Research Institute, Washington DC, USA). From 1993 to 1997, she worked at the Centre de Coopération Internationale en Recherche Agronomique pour le Développement (CIRAD). She has a PhD in rural economics on the microfinance sector in Indonesia.​