Team

Board of Directors

Reid Hoffman | CEO, LinkedIn

Named one of the "Top 50 People Who Matter" by CNN Money, (Reid was #22, Bill Gates was #21, Oprah was #37) Reid is currently CEO and co-founder of LinkedIn. In addition, Reid has invested or provided Board level insight into several of the most successful 'Web 2.0' companies, including Mozilla, FaceBook, Technorati and Six Apart. Prior to LinkedIn, Reid was Executive Vice President of PayPal. At PayPal, Reid was in charge of business development, corporate development, international, government relations, and banking/payments infrastructure. Reid graduated with distinction from Stanford University with a B.S. in Cognitive Science and from Oxford University with a M.A. in Philosophy.

Geoff Davis | President and CEO, Unitus

Geoff Davis is President and CEO of Unitus, a social venture capital investor for the microfinance industry. Geoff has worked with microfinance programs worldwide since 1995, beginning with a program he founded in central Mexico. He was an early employee at Grameen Foundation USA, a global microfinance leader. Geoff has spoken widely on microfinance at the International Monetary Fund, Harvard, Stanford and conferences in Chile, Switzerland, Bangladesh and elsewhere. A social entrepreneur, Geoff formed several companies earlier in his career and has worked at numerous startups. He was named the 2006 Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year for the Pacific Northwest region and was named one of Puget Sound Business Journal's "40 under 40". Geoff holds a B.A. in international relations from Brigham Young University and a master's degree in development economics and public policy from Harvard University.

Jenny Shilling Stein | Executive Director, Draper Richards Foundation

Jenny Shilling Stein is the Executive Director of the Draper Richards Foundation, a foundation that funds the most promising social entrepreneurs and their start up nonprofit ventures. In the style of a venture capital firm, Draper Richards chooses a small portfolio of fast-growth, high-leverage organizations and works closely with them in their early years. Shilling Stein's experience includes the business and non-profit sectors. Prior to joining Draper Richards, Jenny was Director of Business Development & Strategic Partnerships at RealNames Corporation where her primary responsibility was the company's relationship with Microsoft. She has worked at Schwab Foundation for Learning and served as a Board Intern at Joint Venture: Silicon Valley Network. Shilling Stein graduated magna cum laude in English and Psychology from Amherst College. She received both her Master of Business Administration and her Master of Education from Stanford University.

Tabreez Verjee | Founding Partner, Global Asset Capital

Tabreez is an accomplished investor and repeat entrepreneur having founded and funded a number of successful companies. He is currently a founding partner of Global Asset Capital, a firm managing over $500 million in assets. As an entrepreneur, he co-headed one of the first and most popular internet music software start-ups and negotiated its sale for more than a two-hundred times return for investors. He also co-founded an investment bank focused on complex asset securitizations and raised over $150 million in debt capital for ground breaking transactions such as investment grade music royalty bonds. Tabreez started his career as a strategy consultant at Bain & Company and received his B.S. in Environmental Engineering from UC Berkeley.

Alex Edelstein | CEO, Gemstone Development

Alex Edelstein is the CEO of Gemstone Development, the developer of more than $500 million dollars of leading-edge condominium communities . Before starting Gemstone Development, Alex ran Gemstone Capital, which successfully invested in the private stages of Shopping.com, Tellme Networks, and Google. Previously Alex worked at Netscape, where the product managed Netscape Navigator 2.0 and 3.0, and Microsoft, where he was on the design team for Microsoft Exchange and what would become Microsoft Outlook. Alex has a Bachelor of Arts degree from Harvard University, and a Masters in Business Administration from University of California, Berkeley.

Leslie R. Crutchfield | Managing Director, Ashoka Global Academy for Social Entrepreneurship

Leslie Crutchfield is managing director of the Ashoka Global Academy for Social Entrepreneurship, and is co-author of FORCES FOR GOOD: THE SIX PRACTICES OF HIGH-IMPACT NONPROFITS (Wiley 2008). Ashoka is the world’s oldest and largest organization supporting social entrepreneurs; the Global Academy program features the field’s “global greats” such as Nobel Laureate Muhammad Yunus, founder of the Grameen Bank. For the past decade, Leslie has advised a range of foundations and she currently serves as philanthropic advisor to the Goldhirsh Foundation. In the 1990s, she co-founded and ran Who Cares: The Tool Kit for Social Change, a national magazine for young activists (circulation 50,000). Leslie is a frequent public speaker and university lecturer, and has been featured as one of America’s top leaders under 40 by Newsweek. She volunteered with Crossroads Africa in the Gambia, and serves on the boards of the SEED Foundation, Kiva, and Little Kids Rock. Leslie holds an MBA and an AB from Harvard University, and resides in the Washington, D.C. area with her family.

Note: Matt Flannery, Co-founder and CEO; Premal Shah, President; and Jessica Jackley Flannery, Co-founder and Chief Marketing Officer also serve on the Board of Directors

Microfinance Advisory Board

Mary Ellen Iskenderian | President and CEO, Women's World Banking

Ms. Iskenderian is President and CEO of Women's World Banking (WWB), a global not-for-profit financial institution whose network includes over 50 microfinance institutions and banks providing financial services to over 23 million low income women and men in Asia, Africa, Latin America, Europe, North America and the Middle East. Prior to WWB Ms. Iskenderian held numerous leadership positions at the International Finance Corporation of the World Bank Group (IFC) including Director of Partnership Development, Director of Global Financial Markets Portfolio and Director of the South Asia Regional Department. She also sits on the boards of directors of the National Bank of Commerce in Tanzania and ShoreCap International, an important equity and loan fund for microfinance. She has also held corporate directorship positions with Banco Caja Social, Confisura S.A. and the Infrastructure Development Finance Corporation. Ms. Iskenderian holds an MBA degree from the Yale School of Organization And Management and a BS in International Economics from the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service.

Sam Daley-Haris | Director, Microcredit Summit Campaign

Sam Daley-Haris is Director of the Microcredit Summit Campaign, the result of the Microcredit Summit, which brings together microcredit practitioners, advocates, educational institutions, donor agencies, international financial institutions, non-governmental organizations and others involved with microcredit to promote best practices in the field, to learn from each other, and to work towards reaching the goal of 100 million of the world's poorest by the end of 2005. Mr. Daley-Harris is President and Founder of RESULTS Educational Fund, an organization dedicated to mass educational strategies to generate the will to end world hunger. RESULTS Educational Fund organized the February 1997 Microcredit Summit held in Washington, D.C. The Summit was attended by more than 2,900 participants from 137 countries and launched a nine-year campaign to reach 100 million of the world's poorest families with credit for self-employment and other financial and business services by the end of 2005.

John Hatch | Founder, FINCA International

John Hatch is the founder of FINCA, one of the world's leading microcredit institutions with programs in 23 countries and over one million low-income families assisted since its inception in 1984. John is also known as the father of "village banking", a group loan methodology now replicated by over 800 micro-credit programs in 60 countries. John's economic development career spans 44 years, during which time he was a Peace Corps volunteer and staff member (1962-67) Fulbright scholar, (PhD, Univ. Wisconsin, 1973), economist, and a consultant to small farmer development projects in some 50 countries (1973-83). John currently directs FINCA's global mission support department, which features action research by summer interns armed with Palm Pilots who interview some 3,000 clients per year to document their poverty levels, business profitability, and rising living standards. John is a co-founder and executive committee member of the Microcredit Summit global campaign to reach 100 million of the world's poorest mothers with self-employment loans by the year 2006. He has given microcredit workshops at universities at home and abroad, while also teaching microcredit at George Washington University and Johns Hopkins SAIS.

Janine Firpo | Founder, SEMBA Consulting

Janine is currently the founder of SEMBA Consulting and Chair of Sevak Solutions, a direct outgrowth of her previous position at Hewlett-Packard where she was responsible for developing technology to lower the administrative cost of microfinance delivery.  Previous to HP, Janine worked with the World Bank, the US Government and a range of non-profit organizations that were interesting in integrating computers into education, business, and government facilities in developing countries. She has also served as Director of New Media for Random House, VP of Product Development at A.D.A.M. Software and Higher Education Evangelist for Apple Computer.

Bob Graham | Founder, Katalysis Microfinance Network

A veteran of microfinance, Bob Graham is the founder of the Katalysis Microfinance Network of Central America -- a regional nonprofit of 13 intermediary credit providers serving more than 180,000 borrowers with over $60 million in loan capital in four countries.  Bob is currently Executive Director of NamasteDirect, an organization that links donors to low income borrowers in Central America.  Bob is also a successful businessman, philanthropist, CPA and author.  He has extensive international development experience in Central America, and in India with the Tibetan Government in Exile.

Robert King

Robert is one of the first Venture Capitalists on Sand Hill Road and is an active venture investor in U.S. and international companies through his firm, Peninsula Capital.  He also has served on the Board of Village Enterprise Fund, an organization established to help create micro enterprises in Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda.  Bob holds a BA in Economics from Dartmouth College and an MBA from Stanford University.

Brian Lehnen | Executive Director and Co-Founder, Village Enterprise Fund

A long time micro-enterprise development practitioner, Brian Lehnen is the Executive Director and Co-Founder of Village Enterprise Fund (VEF).  Since 1987, VEF has funded over 10,000 low income self employed entrepreneurs, primarily in Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania.  In addition to seed funding, VEF also provide training and mentorship to each micro-enterprise.  Of the 10,000 businesses VEF has started, over 88% continue past year 1.  Over 75% continue for 4 years or longer, and one third launch a second venture.  Brian was instrumental in developing the Kiva concept, launching the first pilot round and continues to be an invaluable supporter as Kiva scales.

David Mulligan

David, who holds an MBA from Cornell and is 25 year veteran of the health care/insurance industry, joined the Kiva team in November 2006. David is the co-founder and retired CEO of First Commonwealth, a venture financed insurer which was twice named to the Inc 500 fastest growing company list and recognized as one of the top performing small cap companies by Forbes magazine . As an inductee into the Illinois Entrepreneur Hall of Fame, David brings his extensive business and start up experience to Kiva to help scale the organization's growth, particularly in the area of its global partnerships. David's been involved in the microfinance industry for over 3 years as an active investor and donor, a participant in industry forums such as the Microcredit Summit Campaign, a member of the YPO microfinance forum, and founder of the global youth microcredit initiative, a program designed for teens to learn about and invest in microcredit.

Web Advisory Board

John Hiler | CEO and Co-Founder, Xanga.com

John is the CEO and co-founder of Xanga.com, one of the world’s largest weblog communities.  Prior to Xanga, John he consulted to software, media, and wireless companies at Mercer Management Consulting.  As an Adjunct Professor at NYC, John teaches a course on Internet Civilization and his current research interests are in Social Capital, Emergent Journalism, and Cyber governance.  John graduated with a B.A. in Economics and Asian Studies from Dartmouth University.

Shripriya Mahesh | Vice President of Product Marketing and Platform, eBay

Shripriya "Shri" Mahesh was most recently the Vice President of Product Marketing and Platform at eBay.  She previously led eBay’s Product Strategy team and had also managed eBay’s Product Management group.  Prior to eBay, Shri was formerly the Vice President of E-Commerce at NextCard and a management consultant at Mitchell Madison Group.  She holds an MBA from Harvard Business School.

Dave McClure | Founder, Paypal Developer Network

Dave McClure has worked in the Silicon Valley high-tech industry for over fifteen years and is on the Board of Directors of Unitus, a venture accelerator for microfinance institutions around the world.  Dave also helps run the Silicon Valley Microfinance Network and co-chairs the Silicon Valley Search SIG for SDForum.  His most recent positions include VP of Marketing at SimplyHired and Director of Marketing at PayPal, where he started PayPal’s Developer Network, a technical marketing & education program comprised of over 300,000 web merchants & developers.  Dave is currently an advisor & investor in several startups including Feedster, HealthUnity, and WellFund.  Dave holds a bachelors degree from the Johns Hopkins University.

Rodger Desai | President and CEO, Rave Wireless, Inc.

Since co-founding Rave Wireless in November 2004, Rodger has helped build the company into the leading provider of mobile phone applications for college students. Prior to starting Rave Wireless, he served as co-founder and CEO of Vettro Corporation, a leading mobile business application company. Mr. Desai has also worked as an executive at Accenture, at which he oversaw more than $240 million telecommunication projects in North America and Western Europe. In addition, he also served as founder and GM of the Digital Donations Initiative, which was critical in launching micro-finance enterprises such as Grameen Bank's Village Phone in the developing world. A graduate of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Mr. Desai holds a Bachelor of Science degree in engineering. He is on-leave from the Master of Business Administration program at Harvard Business School.

Steve Chen | Chief Technology Officer, YouTube

Steve has been instrumental in building YouTube into a viral video phenomenon and helped lead YouTube through the Google acquisition for $1.65 billion less than a year after launching the site. As the company's key technologist, Steve is credited with developing the company's massive data centers and helping build YouTube into a premier entertainment destination and one of the most popular Web sites on the Internet today. Before YouTube, Steve was one of the first product engineers at PayPal. Steve studied computer science at the University of Illinois.

Rod Beckström | Chairman and Chief Catalyst, TWIKI.NET

Rod Beckström is an author, speaker, and the Chairman and Chief Catalyst of a new software company, TWIKI.NET. He founded CATS Software Inc., which he took public as CEO. Rod serves on the boards of Environmental Defense and Jamii Bora Africa Ltd. He is also on the board of the Pacific Council of Foreign Relations and on the Kiva Board of Advisors. Rod holds a BA and an MBA from Stanford and was a Fulbright Scholar. He lives in Palo Alto, California and can be contacted through BECKSTROM.COM.

Sundeep Ahuja | Co-founder, RichRelevance

Sundeep is Kiva's former Marketing Director, a role he filled from March of 2006 to June of 2007. He is currently co-founder of RichRelevance, a hosted automated merchandising engine for commerce sites. Sundeep also actively advises and consults for cause-oriented organizations in marketing and product capacities, leveraging product management experience from MySpace and eBay, finance experience from JPMorgan H&Q, and acting experience on several television shows. Sundeep holds a BS in Computer Science from Stanford University.

Brian Philips | Director of International Marketplaces, PayPal

Brian is Director of PayPal International Marketplaces and responsible for PayPal’s International on-eBay business.  Prior to joining PayPal, Brian served as Director of Product Management for VirtuPay, a leading provider of payments services for digital content publishers.  Prior to that, Brian was founder of Groovi.com, a pioneer of web-based authentication services.  Brian received a BS from the University of Colorado, a JD from the Santa Clara University School of Law and a MBA from the Santa Clara University Leavey School of Business.

Skylar Woodward | Senior Manager and Principal Technical, Yahoo!

Skylar is a Senior Manager and Principal Technical Yahoo at Yahoo Inc.  He has responsible for developing a number Yahoo’s products and is often found directly contributing to Kiva’s code base on advanced development issues (RSS, internal beta Search, etc). Prior to Yahoo, Skylar worked at Flyswat and August Design.  Skylar has a B.S. in Computer Science from Duke University.

Legal Advisory Board

Kiran Jain | Attorney, Bingham McCutchen LLP

Kiran is an attorney at Bingham McCutchen, specializing in the finance practice.  Kiran graduated from from Georgetown Law, where she participated in the Housing and Community Development Clinic that assisted low-income tenants in maintaining affordable housing and accessing low-interest credit. Prior to attending law school, Ms. Jain was an economics consultant in the International Transfer Pricing Group at Arthur Anderson LLP in New York, and Washington, D.C..  Upon graduating from Columbia University, Ms. Jain served as a consultant to the United Nations' Framework Convention on Climate Change in Bonn, Germany. During the summer of 1997 and 1998, she studied language, history and community development in India. She served as an intern at the White House in 1996.

Scott Smith | Attorney, Hanson Bridgett Marcus Vlahos Rudy LLP

Scott is an attorney at Hanson Bridgett, specializing in corporate and tax law. Scott has significant experience counseling nonprofits in connection with all aspects of operations and represents emerging companies in connection with entity formation issues, licensing and other technology related matters.  Scott sits on the Advisory Board of MicroMentor, which connects low-income business owners to individuals who have successfully navigated business ownership or management in the same industry.  Scott has a B.A. from California State University, Fresno, an M.A. from University of Southern California and a law degree from University of Houston.

David Milligan | Attorney, Blackwell Sanders Peper Martin LLP

David is a patent attorney at Blackwell Sanders Peper Martin, specializing in intellectual property protection and intellectual asset management. David has expertise in counseling emerging companies in protecting and leveraging their intellectual assets. Prior to returning to live in Nebraska, David lived and practiced in Washington, DC for 10 years. He and his wife, Jennie, have a heart for grassroots international development and together sit on the National Advisory Council for Colonial Williamsburg Foundation. David has a B.S. in Biological Systems Engineering from University of Nebraska and a law degree from George Washington University.

Communications Advisory Board

Krista Van Lewen | Director of Marketing Communications, Healthline Networks

Krista has more than 15 years experience in multi-functional public relations and marketing roles in the high technology and entertainment industries. Prior to Healthline Networks, Krista headed public relations at a number of high-tech start-up companies, after spending eight years with Discovery Communications, parent company of Discovery Channel, The Learning Channel, The Travel Channel and Animal Planet. Her PR work has resulted in coverage in USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, BusinessWeek, Forbes, The Washington Post, Upside and Business 2.0. Krista holds a B.S. in Scientific and Technical Communications from Michigan Technological University.