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.
Jessica Jackley | Co-Founder
Jessica Jackley is a co-founder of Kiva, and the spirit behind the organization. Jessica first saw the
power and beauty of microfinance while working in rural Kenya,
Tanzania, and Uganda with Village Enterprise Fund and Project Baobab
on impact evaluation and program development.
Jessica has worked in the Stanford Center for Social Innovation to launch
the inaugural Global Philanthropy Forum, and at Amazon.com, Potentia Media,
the International Foundation and World Vision.
Jessica has spoken widely on microfinance and social entrepreneurship,
and has seen microfinance at work in a variety of communities in more than 30 countries.
Jessica serves on a number of non-profit boards, including Opportunity International.
Jessica holds an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business
with Certificates in Global Management and Public Management, and a BA in
Philosophy and Political Science from Bucknell 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, CloudCrowd
Alex Edelstein is the CEO of CloudCrowd, a leader in the Internet crowdsourcing
space. Previously, Alex ran Gemstone Capital, which successfully invested in the
private stages of Shopping.com, Tellme Networks, and Google. Before that, Alex
worked at Netscape, where he managed the Netscape Navigator 2.0 and 3.0 products,
and Microsoft, where he was on the design team for Microsoft Exchange and what
would become Microsoft Outlook.
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.
Julie Hanna Farris
Julie has been an entrepreneur, CEO, board member, advisor and investor in a number of consumer internet and enterprise software startups, helping guide them from obscurity to prominence and resulting in several successful acquisitions. Among them Portola (acquired by Netscape), onebox.com (acquired by OpenWave), Healtheon (now WebMD), and Scalix, a global leader in open source email software. She has spent her career anticipating market trends and exploiting disruptive technologies, most notably in the areas of the internet/web, open source, messaging, collaboration and social software.
Note: Matt Flannery, Co-founder and CEO; and Premal Shah, President 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.
David Auerbach
David Auerbach manages international expansion and strategic growth projects at
Endeavor Global , a New York-based not-for-profit that catalyzes the growth of high-impact entrepreneurs in emerging markets. Endeavor has pioneered a new model for development that engages the private sector in mentoring and advising over 380 of the most promising and innovative entrepreneurs in Latin America, Egypt, India, Turkey, and South Africa. David has also served as Deputy Chair for Poverty Alleviation at the Clinton Global Initiative, former President Clinton's effort to engage the private sector in solving some of the world's most pressing problems. Before these roles, David taught English at Yali Middle School and studied Mandarin for two years in Changsha, China. He has also researched foreign policy issues at the Center for American Progress in Washington, DC. He holds a BA from Yale University.
Social Performance Advisory Board
Anton Simanowitz
Anton Simanowitz is a researcher at the Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex. His work focuses on the measurement and management of social performance in microfinance and social enterprise. He is Director of the
Imp-Act Consortium an international Consortium that supports and promotes the management of social performance in microfinance, providing practical lessons for practice and for public policy. This developed from a 5-year global action-research programme that worked to support the development of practical systems to understand and improve impact and social performance in microfinance. Prior to this Anton headed the R&D department of a leading microfinance organisation in South Africa, was head of the evaluation unit for a development PVO, and was desk officer for a major international development PVO in the UK.
Cécile Lapenu
Cécile Lapenu, a citizen of France, is the executive director of
CERISE (Comité d’Echange, de Réflexion et d’Information sur les Systèmes d’Epargne - crédit). CERISE is a platform of France-based, leading MicroFinance support organizations (CIDR, CIRAD, GRET, IRAM and IRC-SupAgro). CERISE was started in 1998, and since then it has organized various studies and seminars on the following themes : financing of agriculture, governance, social performances and impact, MFIs in remote rural areas, etc.
Before joining CERISE in January 2001, Cécile Lapenu was a post-doctoral fellow at IFPRI (International Food Policy Research Institute, Washington DC, USA) working on the Rural Finance Team in the Food Consumption and Nutrition Division. From 1993 to 1997, she worked on the development of rural financial system as a researcher at the Centre de Coopération Internationale en Recherche Agronomique pour le Développement. She received a Ph.D in agricultural economics from the Ecole Nationale Supérieure Agronomique de Montpellier.
Laura Foose
Laura Foose has fifteen years of experience in policy design and advocacy promoting private sector development and poverty alleviation in developing and transitional countries. Ms. Foose has experience formulating microfinance policies for the international donor community. She has also designed microfinance projects and conducted evaluations of MFIs. For five years, Ms. Foose was a working group facilitator for the SEEP Network, the MF industry association, working extensively in the areas of poverty assessment/outreach. She currently chairs the international Social Performance Task Force, a group of over 350 donors, practitioners, social investors, microfinance networks and raters advancing social performance assessment and management.
Ms. Foose is a professor of microfinance at Johns Hopkins University and Georgetown University. She is a founder of Woman Advancing Microfinance, and is on the board of the Alliance of Students Against Poverty (ASAP), a public awareness campaign aimed to address extreme poverty by mobilizing the idealism and talents of students.
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.
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.
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.
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.