Jessica Jackley

Co-Founder of Kiva, the Revolutionary Microlending Website

Kiva and the New Business Thinking: Challenging Common Business Practices; Harnessing the Power of Perspective

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THE LATEST: Jessica Jackley has been selected as a USA Network Character Approved Honoree for 2010. The annual award is given to innovators in their field who influence our opinions, our style, and our view of the world. Check out Jessica Jackley's award profile here.

Jessica Jackley is the co-founder of Kiva, the world's first peer-to-peer microloan website. At Kiva.org, users can make microloans directly to specific developing world entrepreneurs, who then use the money to start or grow a small business, and lift themselves out of poverty. Loans start at $25. Named one of the top ideas of 2006 by The New York Times Magazine, and praised by Oprah, Bill Clinton and countless others, Kiva is one of the fastest-growing social benefit websites in history. Since its founding, in 2005, it has loaned over $100 million from lenders to entrepreneurs across 182 countries (By 2012, it expects to have loaned over $1 billion to the world's working poor). For all its success, Kiva remains animated by a simple message ("To connect people through lending to alleviate poverty") and by the idea that relationships are a powerful force for positive change.

Jackley, a finalist for TIME's 100 Most Influential People in 2009 and an honoree for USA Networks' Character Approved award in 2010, first saw the power and dignity of microfinance while working in East Africa with a microenterprise non-profit. Sector-agnostic about social change, Jackley has worked for public, nonprofit, and private organizations including the Stanford Center for Social Innovation, Amazon, and others. In 2009, she began work on ProFounder, which provides new ways for small businesses in the U.S. to access start-up funding through community involvement. She also teaches Global Entrepreneurship at the Marshall School of Business at USC. She holds an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business and a BA in Philosophy and Political Science. Discussing a wide-range of timely issues, from economic development to women's empowerment to Web 2.0, she reminds us that, at the heart of social entrepreneurism, there will always remain the connection between two human beings.

Jessica Jackley Speech Topics

Kiva and the New Business Thinking: Challenging Common Business Practices

Kiva, launched in 2005, now channels over one million dollars every week to entrepreneurs in the world's poorest communities. So, how do you rapidly scale a global company while staying true to core values? In the midst of intense growth, how do you foster innovation and design thinking while managing risk? How do you manage increasingly decentralized teams while maintaining a common purpose? Drawing on her eclectic background--she studied art and philosophy before earning an MBA--Jackley presents powerful new business lessons, reframing best practices in atypical, thought-provoking ways. Bright, energetic, and unapologetically optimistic about the power of business to change the world, Jackley offers a refreshing keynote relevant to any company, from not-for-profits to Fortune 100s.

Kiva and Social Media: Creating Unstoppable Momentum for Growth

From the beginning, Kiva's presence on the Internet has been extraordinary. Its voice in the blogosphere, the Twitterverse, and in far-reaching pockets of the Internet-- anywhere people are online and social--has been bold, clear, and unique. In four years, with zero marketing budget, Jessica Jackley (former Chief Marketing Officer) helped Kiva reach more than 600,000 lenders, 250,000 entrepreneurs, and millions of supporters in over 180 countries. In this idea-packed talk, Jackley delivers expert lessons for any company, in any sector, non-profit and for-profit alike. How do you maximize your social media initiatives, embrace radical transparency, nurture a culture of trust, and inspire co-creation of your product among a wide user base? By facilitating meaningful connections between individuals, Jackley shows us how to build unstoppable web momentum that translates into positive real world action.

Harnessing the Power of Perspective (For college audiences)

In this talk, Jessica Jackley shares the inspirational path that led her, just after graduation, to create Kiva. It's a story of unorthodox beginnings, surprising growth, and the unprecedented social change that has revolutionized a worldwide microlending movement. Jackley drew on an unlikely background--studying philosophy and art; seeing microfinance firsthand in Africa; earning an MBA while launching Kiva--to become one of the world's leading female entrepreneurs. And though Kiva's successes can be measured in many ways, Jackley reminds students that Kiva's most important contribution has been in the minds and the hearts of the thousands of lenders and borrowers who use the site. This connection, based on dignity and respect, is crucial in whatever you dedicate yourself to. Whatever you plan to do after graduation, Jackley provides practical, encouraging lessons from her own journey. Enthusiastic, grounded and very relatable, she helps students realize that they, too, can spend their lives doing meaningful work, that they can synthesize their skills to do what they love, and that they can build an extraordinary career--a meaningful life--by helping others.

VIDEOS

LINKS

Kiva

2010 USA Network "Character Approved" Honoree Profile

ARTICLES

"When Small Loans Make a Big Difference" - Forbes

"Your $25 Can Start a Business, Change a Life." - CNN

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