JESSICA JACKLEY

JESSICA JACKLEY

Jessica Jackley Flannery, is an co-founded Kiva with her husband Matthew Flannery. Jessica has worked in rural Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda with Village Enterprise Fund and Project Baobab on impact evaluation and program development. Earlier, she spent three years in the Stanford Business School’s Center for Social Innovation and Public Management Program, where she helped launch the inaugural Global Philanthropy Forum.

Jessica Jackley Flannery and her husband, Matt Flannery, started Kiva just a few years ago. Today, the Internet-based lending platform has allowed over 60,000 people around the world to channel nearly 6 million dollars in loans to small businesses in developing countries. In this audio interview with host Sheela Sethuraman, Jessica talks about her inspiration for starting Kiva and her vision for Kiva’s future.
Kiva works with microfinance institutions to identify small businesses in need of money, and then gives people an easy way to make loans to these small businesses.With a quick click, lenders can find out how their loans are affecting their chosen small businesses.

Kiva was founded in October 2005 by Matt Flannery and Jessica Flannery. The couple’s initial interest in microfinance was inspired by a 2003 lecture given by Grameen Bank founder Muhammad Yunus at Stanford Business School. Jessica Flannery, then Jessica Jackley.

While visiting Jessica in Africa, Matt and Jessica spent time interviewing entrepreneurs about the problems they faced in starting ventures and found the lack of access to start-up capital was a common theme. After returning from Africa, they began developing their plan for a microfinance project that would grow into Kiva, which means “unity” in Swahili.

About six months later, kiva.org crossed my path again when I read a blurb in our church newsletter mentioning that Jessica Jackley, the co-founder of the organization, would be the speaker at this year’s Al Filipov Peace and Justice Forum.

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.