Pathways to Peace - Jessica Jackley

About Pathways to Peace

Pathways to Peace is an annual celebration promoting discourse on activities that significantly and meaningfully impact lasting peace across the glob. In addition to the participation of community groups that seek to advance a more just world, an internationally renowned speaker is invited to serve as an inspirational model of success.

Jessica Jackley Bio

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 poor entrepreneurs around the world, providing affordable capital for them to start or expand microenterprises. 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.

Jessica Jackley also stars in a viral 2012 Best Buy television commercial about how her first laptop helped her start KIVA. Jackley is the recipient of the 2012 Symons Innovator Award, which recognizes the importance of women's participation in technology innovation and business.

Since its founding in 2005, KIVA has loaned over $300 million from lenders to entrepreneurs across 206 countries. (By 2012, total loans on Kiva to the world's working poor are expected to reach $1 billion.) For all its success, KIVAremains focused on a simple mission to connect people through lending to alleviate poverty, one person at a time. Jackley was also a founder and CEO of ProFounder, which joined forces with GOOD in 2012 to create innovative tools and experiences for entrepreneurs to crowdfund.

Jackley is a finalist for TIME's 100 Most Influential People in 2009 and a recipient of 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. 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.

Also an educator, Jackley is currently a Visiting Practitioner at Stanford's Center for Philanthropy and Civil Society, has taught Global Entrepreneurship at the Marshall School of Business at USC, and lectures frequently at other universities around the country. She holds an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business and a BA in Philosophy and Political Science, and serves as an active advisor and board member on several organizations championing women, microfinance, tech, and the arts. 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 entrepreneurship, the relationships we form with each other and the extent to which we believe in each others' potential are the most powerful forces for positive change.