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October 18, 2007
Jessica Flannery of Kiva.org
Jessica Flannery (www.kiva.org) is speaking during the "Innovation From the Bottom Up" session and is wowing the POPTech audience. Her enthusiasm is infectious; she's vibrant, passionate, and articulate about what she and her husband Matt have done to enable *anyone* to make a business loan (with as little as $25) to entrepreneurs in Third-world countries, enabling them to rise out of poverty.
From Kiva's website: "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 spoken widely on microfinance and social entrepreneurship, and has shared the vision for Kiva.org in more than 30 countries worldwide. Jessica holds an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business and a BA in Philosophy and Political Science from Bucknell University."
However, what you get from hearing Jessica speak firsthand, and not just from reading the Kiva description on the web, is how one person's vision can make a difference, impacting the world in an incredibly positive way. When I first pondered the theme of this year's POPTech, I was bracing for the "downer" of how humanity is negatively impacting the planet as we expand and consume more and more. But then one gets to listen to this young middle-class woman from the Midwest, and how she made her vision come alive to positively impact people's lives far and wide, using the Internet.
What also impressed me was how her life was changed just from hearing one person: Muhammed Yunus, the founder of the Gremeen Bank. She said that hearing him speak and getting to talk to him was what inspired her. She ended up quitting her job at the time and moving to Africa to do her dream, which was to work in microfinance in Africa.
Pretty amazing...
Posted by Mike at October 18, 2007 04:35 PM
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