Our team

ILLANA MELZER

Engagement Manager

Illana is the engagement manager at 71point4. Illana is a lifetime consultant with over 20 years experience. Her work is focused on demand-side research and analysis, with a focus on lower income market segments. She works with corporate, public sector and not-for-profit clients across a range of sectors including banking, consumer credit, other financial services, and housing.

Illana co-founded research and analytics consultancy, Eighty20, and successfully led their strategic research team for over a decade. Prior to that Illana worked at Accenture and the Monitor Group. Illana holds a Bachelor of Business Science degree in Mathematical Economics.

CLAIRE HAYWORTH

Senior Consultant

Claire is a senior consultant at 71point4 with over 10 years’ experience. Her work focuses on issues related to the usage of digital financial services, credit market development, affordable housing, financial inclusion and MSME’s, among others. Claire is experienced working across various types of data including qualitative data, survey data and larger administrative and transactional datasets to better understand customer behaviours.

Claire has a Business Science degree, specialising in Marketing from the University of Cape Town and has completed two online courses through the Digital Frontiers Institute.

HANJO ODENDAAL

Principal Data Scientist

With over 10 years experience working throughout Africa, Hanjo leads our analytics, statistics and engineer aspects on projects. His expertise focuses on how data can be employed to answer impactful and meaningful questions that always aim to put people at the center. He has worked in banking, insurance, housing, agriculture, telecommunications and credit; focusing mostly on designing and managing the implementation of analytical solutions to deliver real-time insights for the client.

Hanjo also has a passion for research and teaching and regularly lectures on the applications of big data to drive changes in traditional economic thinking.

Hanjo holds a PhD in Economics from the University of Stellenbosch. His thesis focused on the application of natural language processing and statistical learning applied within traditional economic frameworks.

JESSICA BREIER

Senior Research Consultant

Jessica is a senior research consultant at 71point4 with 9 years’ experience. Her work typically involves mixed-method studies incorporating quantitative and qualitative data sources. Jessica has worked on a broad range of research topics relating to Micro and Small Enterprises (MSEs), affordable rental housing, tourism, the small vehicle delivery market, and informal credit lending practices. Jessica is also involved in the Tenure Support Centre, an action-research project that helps lower-income households resolve their title deed challenges, run by 71point4 in partnership with the Centre for Affordable Housing Finance in Africa (CAHF).

Jessica has a Bachelor of Business Science degree specialising in Marketing and has completed four online courses through the Digital Frontiers Institute.

TIVAN LEAK

Junior Research Analyst

Tivan is a research analyst at 71point4. He holds a Master of Commerce in Economics from Stellenbosch University. His dissertation explored the economic impact of corruption and why it is an important area for economic research in South Africa to focus on. Tivan is interested in harnessing technical skills to liberate insights from data that allow for the evaluation of the impact or potential impact of policy on people.