Jessica Jackley is the co-founder of Kiva.org, an online community that helps individuals loan small amounts of money, called microloans, to entrepreneurs throughout the world.
Seven years ago, Jessica Jackley heard a speech by Grameen Bank founder Muhammad Yunus, an economist from Bangladesh who had developed the idea of microcredit: loans offered to entrepreneurs too poor to qualify for traditional bank loans.
She says, "I was so completely blown away by the idea that I quit my job, dropped everything and moved to East Africa to help."
In late 2005 she co-founded Kiva.org with Matt Flannery.
Kiva uses a peer-to-peer model in which lenders sort through profiles of potential borrowers -- be they a farmer in Cambodia, a pharmacist in Sierra Leone, or a shopkeeper in Mongolia -- and make loans to those they find most appealing.
The minimum loan is $25, and the interest rate is 0%.
The repayment rate for loans is more than 98%, Jackley says, and since the group was founded almost 700,000 people have pledged $128 million in loans to more than 325,000 people.
Jackley's latest project is ProFounder, a new platform that helps small businesses in the United States access startup funding through community investing.
"Kiva mixes the entrepreneurial daring of Google with the do-gooder ethos of Bono."
Knowledge@Wharton report, Forbes
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