Matt Flannery

Global poverty can be eliminated in the next 35 years

Kiva is the world's first person-to-person micro-lending website, enabling individuals to extend loans to unique entrepreneurs worldwide. Kiva works with local field partners that distribute these microloans to the entrepreneurs, who subsequently repay their loans via the local field partners. Kiva’s greatest strength is that individual financiers and entrepreneurs are in direct contact with one another via www.kiva.org. The entrepreneurs give regular progress updates via the site.

Former computer programmer Matt Flannery first heard of microcredit in 2003, when he attended a presentation on the topic at the Stanford Business School, where friend and Co-founder Jessica Jackley was a lecturer. Jackley decided to chart a new course and joined an organisation that extended microloans to small businesses in East Africa. During a visit to Africa, they became aware just how difficult it was for budding entrepreneurs to obtain seed capital to start their business. This experience led to the establishment of Kiva, which is the Swahili word for unity.

Since 2005, Flannery has been working fulltime for Kiva, which has since evolved from a pilot project into a widely recognised online service, with partners around the globe, who have loaned millions to allow small businesses to flourish.

Flannery is a Draper Richards Fellow, Skoll Awardee and Ashoka Fellow. He graduated with a BS in Symbolic Systems and a Masters in Philosophy from Stanford University.