Jessica Jackley Flannery is a co-founder of Kiva.org, the world’s first peer-to-peer online micro-lending web site. Kiva 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 web sites in history, connecting hundreds of thousands of people through lending across more than 120 countries.
Flannery first saw the power and beauty of microfinance while working in rural Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda with Village Enterprise Fund and Project Baobab on impact evaluation and program development. Flannery is sector-agnostic about social change and has worked for public, nonprofit and private organizations including the Stanford Center for Social Innovation, Amazon.com, Potentia Media, the International Foundation, World Vision and others.
Her work with Kiva has been featured in a wide array of media, including Oprah, the Today Show, CNN, BBC, NBC, ABC, PBS, NPR, the New York Times and more. Flannery speaks widely on microfinance and social entrepreneurship, and serves as a director on several boards related to microenterprise development, including Opportunity International.
Flannery 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 is a trained yoga instructor, avid surfer and poet.
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