Andrew Spindler and a Look Into FSVC
Andrew Spindler first became aware of FSVC in 1990, not long after the non-profit was founded. At the time, the organization sent missions to each major country in Eastern Europe, with the goal of identifying and providing solutions within developing financial sectors. A senior member of the New York Federal Reserve Bank was sent on each of the missions. Spindler, a former senior vice-president at the bank, landed in Yugoslavia for a week.
“The experience of going to former Yugoslavia … was unforgettable. I realized in [those] sessions with bankers and people trying to develop the stock exchange that it was as if all the knowledge I had gained in finance over my career up to that date was simply a prologue to that time. The chance to give something back to people who urgently needed and wanted this information was compelling to me.”
When he was offered the opportunity to run the organization in 1993, Spindler took it. Today, Andrew Spindler is the President and CEO of FSVC, and the organization has expanded to addressing the needs within financial systems of emerging markets more broadly through volunteers with extensive professional experience. As a US public-private partnership, Spindler finds that FSVC is uniquely positioned to address the needs of emerging markets.
“We’re helping to build private markets … We’re much closer to the private sector than large government bureaucracies, and tying together US government funding and private factor expertise to build markets abroad is quite powerful.”
Although the organization is relatively small, Spindler believes that FSVC’s name is present in the informed circles that matter most. “We don’t really market ourselves. But after 27 years of work, we have a very strong international reputation in financial sectors in emerging market countries, specifically in central banks, finance ministries, and US embassies that are often intermediaries for these countries in helping to get assistance.”
As for volunteers, FSVC looks for varied skill sets from both private and public sectors, across a whole spectrum of skills. “The more experience and the more interested they are in sharing their expertise for the common good, the more attractive they are as a volunteer to us … this work is really important and offers an invaluable way to improve the quality of life in the countries that ask for our assistance.”