- 2009 NCI Summit New Media Spotlight: Kiva.Org Founders Premal Shah and Matt Flannery
- Co-founders of Kiva.org, will speak Feb 7 at the 2009 Newcomb Summit
- Posted January 23, 2009
Premal Shah and Matt Flannery, cofounders of microfinance website Kiva.Org and advocates for world economic development, are featured guests at the 2009 Newcomb College institute Summit. Kiva has revolutionized the developing art of micro-finance, producing impressive charitable results in the process. True business innovators, Shah and Flannery are using peer-to-peer lending to revolutionize how we fund development initiatives around the planet.
Flannery and Shaw will speak at 11:30 am on Saturday, February 7 in the Kendall Cram Room of the Lavin-Bernick Center for University Life at Tulane University.
Kiva allows potential investors to connect directly with partners, allowing them to move forward in their small business initiatives. Past projects have involved assisting a Cambodian sugar cane juicer, a Senegalese vehicle repair shop, and a Bosnian dairy farm. Kiva's influence reaches across continents and across cultures. Throughout the course of the project, lenders receive emails and are allowed to track repayments of funds. Upon repayment, funds may be given to another lendee, donated, or kept. Kiva partners with existing micro-finance institutions the world over, allowing the organization to gain access to deserving entrepreneurs and small business overs from poor communities world-wide. Kiva gives lenders the chance to work as partners with entrepreneurs in the developing world, giving charity an entirely new dimension.
Premal Shah, Kiva's president, has devoted much of his professional life to the cause of micro-finance and economic development in the Third World. Serving as a Principal Product Manager at PayPal prior to Kiva's founding, Shah received a 1997 grant from Stanford University to research micro-finance in Gujarat, India, allowing him a first-hand glance at the effects of small-time lending in the developing world. Shah went on to leave his job at PayPal and begin Kiva.org with Matt Flannery, as well as gaining PayPal's continuing support of Kiva's charitable efforts. Shah is also the founder of the Silicon Valley Micro-finance Network, and has recently spent 2 months working in India to refine and streamline Kiva's business model.
Matt Flannery acts as co-founder and CEO of Kiva, guiding the company in its journey from pilot project to established, successful online service. Flannery began developing Kiva in 2004 as a side project while working as a programmer at Tivo, a job he would eventually leave in order to focus on Kiva full-time. Prior to founding the website, he traveled throughout Africa filming stories of micro-businesses begun by the Village Enterprise Fund, giving him the inspiration to begin Kiva. A Draper Richards Fellow and blogger on the Skoll Foundation's Social Edge website, Flannery graduated with a Masters in Analytical Philosophy from Stanford University. Flannery also runs Kiva's blog, "Kiva Chronicles," an ongoing report on his experiences in the world of micro-finance.
More information about the Newcomb College Institute Leadership Summit may be found at our website.
