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Katherine is a recent graduate from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo where she studied International Business and French. She is currently working at a private equity firm in the San Francisco Bay Area. Katherine loves to travel, and recently spent her summer volunteering in Mauritius.
Drew Meyers is a travel addict and founder of Horizon. Social entrepreneurship & microfinance advocate.
Hi, I'm a finance blogger who is interested in how different financial tools, including microfinance, can deliver real value to consumers.
Kiva Small Business Advisor for the Greater Seattle area. Reach me at raheem.kiva@gmail.com
Currently a Master of Public Administration (MPA) student at Bowling Green State. University in Bowling Green, Ohio, USA. Specializing in International Development with focus on sub-Saharan Africa.
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Global Microfinance Connections – From Capetown to San Francisco
Published By Drew Meyers on November 1, 2012
There are a number of microfinance connections I know, all over the globe. Some of them I’ve met in person (like Sloane), some I haven’t. One of the ones I hadn’t met was James Beshara.
The relationship history is an interesting one. I first interacted with James through my best friend, Kayla, who works at Esperanza International(an MFI focused on the Dominican Republic) a few years ago. James worked at an MFI called Kuyasa in Cape Town, South Africa prior to leaving to work on a microfinance platform, Dvelo. In addition, he co-founded MiFi Report — and actually even wrote a post on myKRO.org back in 2009. We’ve traded emails over the past few years, and have even gotten on a skype call or two — but had never met in person.
Until yesterday, when we had coffee.
It certainly wasn’t an easy process to realize James and I were in the same city — it really should be way easier to find microfinance advocates in a given location. This fall, since returning from Startup Abroad — I’ve been largely hanging out at a friend’s in San Francisco this fall. Randomly, I connected Courtney McColgan and James via email a couple months ago (Courtney co-founded Wokai and has moved on to co-found Bevel), which prompted me to tell James we should get on a skype call since it had been so long since we had spoken (I assumed he was still abroad) — only to find out he is working on a startup – CrowdTilt – in San Francisco. So, of course, we changed our Skype into an in person meeting.
If there’s one thing I’ve realized from all this — its that it’s a small, interconnected microfinance world. All the effort it takes to meet contacts like James is worth it when you have an amazing 1 hour conversation over coffee spanning travel, Cape Town, Crowd Tilt, yCombinator, community management, and of course a bit about microfinance.