jessica jackley

Jessica Jackley Jessica is a founder and CEO of ProFounder (www.profounder.com), a new crowdfunding platform providing new ways for small businesses in the U.S. access to investment funding through community involvement. ProFounder is currently working with a select group of alpha entrepreneurs and will be open to the public in Dec 2010. Prior to ProFounder, Jessica was a founder and CMO at Kiva.org, the world's first peer-to-peer online microlending website. Named as one of the top ideas in 2006 by the New York Times Magazine and called "revolutionary" by the BBC, Kiva (www.kiva.org) lets internet users lend as little as $25 to specific developing world entrepreneurs, providing affordable capital to help them start or expand a small business. Kiva has been one of the fastest-growing social benefit websites in history, and since its founding in 2005, has loaned nearly $200M from lenders to entrepreneurs across 208 countries. Jessica began her work in microfinance in rural East Africa with nonprofit Village Enterprise Fund. She has also worked for the Stanford Center for Social Innovation, Amazon.com, Potentia Media, the International Foundation, World Vision, and others. Her work has been featured in a wide array of media and press including Oprah, the Today Show, CNN, BBC, NBC, ABC, PBS, NPR, the WSJ, NYTimes, The Economist, and more. A finalist for TIME's 100 Most Influential People of 2009, Jessica has received numerous awards for her work, and speaks widely on microfinance and social entrepreneurship. Jessica currently serves as a director on several boards (both non-profit and for-profit), and is an active member on number of affiliate groups championing women, tech, and the arts. Jessica holds an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business with Certificates in Global Management and Public Management, and a BA in Philosophy and Political Science from Bucknell University. She has taught several courses in Entrepreneurship at both Stanford and the Marshall School of Business at USC. Jessica lives in Los Angeles and San Francisco, and loves yoga, surfing, and poetry.