Clay Water Brick
Finding Inspiration from Entrepreneurs Who Do the Most with the Least
You can do good and do well at the same time. Just ask Jessica Jackley, founder of KIVA, the world’s most successful microlending site. Praised by the likes of Oprah and Bill Clinton, Jackley champions diverse skill sets, finding meaning in your work, and dreaming big. On stage, Jackley delivers an upbeat and enduring message: you can synthesize your disparate skills to create a meaningful life and career.
Jessica Jackley is a Founder and former Chief Marketing Officer of KIVA, the world’s first peer to peer microlending website. KIVA lets users lend as little as $25 to aspiring entrepreneurs around the globe, providing affordable capital for them to start or expand microenterprises. Named one of the top ideas of the year 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 and has, since its inception, raised over $1 billion for aspiring entrepreneurs across 206 countries. Jackley was also named by Forbes as one of 5 rising stars in Healthcare, Education, and the Environment. She is the author of the book Clay Water Brick: Finding Inspiration from Entrepreneurs Who Do the Most with the Least, which the Financial Times called “so thoroughly well meaning and engagingly put it is too magnetic to put down.”
Jackley first saw the power and dignity of microfinance while working in East Africa with a microenterprise non-profit. Convinced that social change happens across all sectors, Jackley has worked in public, nonprofit, and private organizations including the Stanford Center for Social Innovation, Amazon.com, Potentia Media and many others. Jackley is the recipient of the Symons Innovator Award, which recognizes the importance of women’s participation in technology innovation and business.
Jackley was also a founder and CEO of ProFounder, which joined forces with GOOD to create innovative tools and experiences for entrepreneurs to crowdfund. She is currently an independent consultant and investor with the Collaborative Fund, and recently served as Walt Disney Imagineering’s first Entrepreneur-in-Residence, focusing on projects related to corporate citizenship, social impact, and happiness.
Jackley served as a Visiting Practitioner at Stanford’s Center for Philanthropy and Civil Society. She has taught Entrepreneurial Design for Social Change at Drew University and Global Entrepreneurship at the Marshall School of Business at USC. She is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, a World Economic Forum’s Young Global Leader, and serves as an active board member or advisor for several nonprofit organizations including Habitat for Humanity.