Spring Colloquium

Thanks to everyone for attending our first-annual Spring Colloquium!

We are so grateful to the many audience members who took part in our first annual spring colloquium! Despite coinciding with finals at many universities, we had over 100 attendees from a wide range of interests and disciplines, a majority of whom traveled from outside Princeton!

Thanks especially to our wonderful group of speakers. As Dean McGuinness stated in her opening remarks, “Many of the speakers in attendance are ones that I have been trying to bring to campus for four years. The students of Princeton Microfinance Organization were able to accomplish this in 4 weeks!”

We hope that you enjoyed coming to our colloquium as much as we enjoyed having you! Please keep in touch with PMO for future events/projects.

Thanks!

-PMO Colloquium Team

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Princeton Microfinance Organization Presents:

Microfinance,

Economic Development,

and Global Health Colloquium

May 1, 2009

Princeton University

Peter B. Lewis Library, Bowl 120

General Information:

The Princeton Microfinance Organization (PMO) cordially invites you to attend their inaugural spring colloquium. This year’s day-long event will consist of both individual and panel presentations by leaders of the various facets of the budding field of microfinance and global health to address innovative approaches in microfinance and economic development, with special emphasis on their effects on worldwide health.

Sponsored by the USG Projects Board, the Bendheim Center for Finance, and the Lewis International Center, this event promises to be an excellent opportunity for microfinance leaders to present the work that is being undertaken in this still relatively unknown field to today’s generation of interested students. Open to the Princeton community at large as well as students from neighboring universities, the event seeks to: (1) encourage the dissemination of valuable information related to microfinance and global health, and (2) provide a networking/recruiting opportunity for both students and leaders in the various sectors of microfinance.

Below you will find a comprehensive list of our participating speakers along with accompanying profiles. The event is scheduled for May 1st, 2009 from 10:00 AM to 5:00 PM. There will be a morning session, two afternoon sessions, and an intervening complimentary lunch and networking period.

If you have any further questions regarding the colloquium or need assistance of any kind, please contact Jacob Hiller ‘10 (jhiller@princeton.edu).

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Event Schedule:

10:00 am – 10:30 am  Visitor Registration
(Lewis Library, Bowl 120)

10:30 am – 12:15 pm   1st Session (Bowl 120)

10:30 am – 11:00 am Dean Karen McGuinness Introductory Remarks

11:00 am – 11:40 am Keynote Speech I – Sam Daley-Harris

11:40 am – 12:15 pm Discussion Session I:

Bowl 120: Estelle Berger

Bowl 138: Lynn Martin

12:15 pm – 1:15 pm  Lunch and Networking (Atrium)

1:15 pm – 3:15 pm  2nd Session (Bowl 120)

1:15 pm – 2:00 pm Keynote Speech II – Susan Davis

2:00 pm – 2:35 pm Mark Frazier

2:35 pm – 3:15 pm Arka Mukherjee & Arabinda Sinha

3:15 pm – 3:30 pm  Break

3:30 pm – 4:40 pm  3rd Session

3:30 pm – 4:00 pm Discussion Session II:

Bowl 120: Clara Lipson & Susan Salerno

Bowl 138: Paula Pagniez

4:00 pm – 4:40 pm Bowl 138: Keynote III – Elissa McCarter

4:40 pm – 4:50 pm  PMO Concluding Remarks (Bowl 138)

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Speaker List:

Estelle Berger

Director of Knowledge Management, Opportunity International
Estelle Berger is the Director of Knowledge Management at Opportunity International. She is responsible for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation funded learning agenda, focusing on expanding microfinance services across Africa. She has worked in the microfinance sector for five years and has held the CFO position for the Micro Insurance Agency (now MicroEnsure).  She also served as acting CEO for MicroEnsure’s pilot agency in Uganda.

Sam Daley-Harris

Director of the Microcredit Summit Campaign; Founder of RESULTS
Sam Daley-Harris is founder and director of the Microcredit Summit Campaign. He is also founder of RESULTS, a grassroots lobbying organization that seeks to create the political will to end hunger and the worst aspects of poverty. Mr. Daley-Harris is the author of the book Reclaiming Our Democracy: Healing the Break Between People and Government, about which President Jimmy Carter said, “[Daley-Harris] provides a road map for global involvement in planning a better future.”

In 2007, Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Muhammad Yunus said: “….no other organization has been as critical a partner in seeing to it that microcredit is used as a tool to eradicate poverty and empower women than RESULTS and RESULTS Educational Fund’s Microcredit Summit Campaign.”

Title of Talk:
“Microloans to Thieves and Other Revolutionary Acts that Demand Championing”

Susan Davis

President and CEO, BRAC USA
Susan Davis is a thought leader in international development and civil society innovation. She is a founder and current President & CEO of BRAC USA, a newly created organization to support BRAC’s global expansion to Africa and other countries in Asia. She Chairs Ashoka’s Global Academy for Social Entrepreneurship and serves on its international board committee that selects Ashoka Fellows. She is also Senior Advisor to New York University’s Reynolds Program on Social Entrepreneurship. Previously she oversaw Ashoka’s expansion to the Middle East, North Africa and Central Asia and served as a Senior Advisor to the Director General of the International Labor Organization. Prior to that, she led the global advocacy group, Women’s Environment & Development Organization. She has extensive micro-credit experience from her years with the Ford Foundation in Bangladesh and from her work with Women’s World Banking. In addition she was a founding board member and Chair of the Grameen Foundation. Earlier she was the Assistant Director of the export trading company of the Port Authority of New York & New Jersey. In addition to Grameen Foundation, she serves on numerous other boards including Project Enterprise, Sirleaf Market Women’s Fund, and African Women’s Development Fund USA. She is on Mary Robinson’s Advisory Council of Realizing Rights: the Ethical Globalization Initiative. She was educated at Georgetown, Harvard and Oxford universities.

Mark Frazier

Co-Founder & President, Openworld Inc.
Mark Frazier is Co-Founder and President of Openworld Inc. (www.openworld.com), a nonprofit group specializing in toolkits to launch microscholarships for eLearning and microvouchers for eHealthcare in developing countries. The firm is presently assisting telecenters and grassroots schools for the poor in securing land grants and in accelerating eGovernment reforms as a way to build assets for self-sustaining microvouchers in Asia, Eastern Europe, and Africa. Mr. Frazier has specialized in IT Cluster and competitiveness initiatives, telecommunications reform, enterprise zone legislation, telework outsourcing, eLearning, and community self-help initiatives in more than 50 countries for public and private sector clients. He is a graduate of Harvard University, past publisher and managing editor of Reason magazine, and a former Visiting Fellow of the Lehrman Institute.

Title of Talk:
“Digital Giving as a Catalyst to Awaken Dormant Capital”

Clara Lipson

Independent Consultant; Board Member, Microfinance Club of New York and Steering Committee of Women Advancing Microfinance
Formerly a banking officer in corporate finance, Ms. Lipson worked for several donor agencies on financial sector reform in Central and Eastern Europe.  She also designed microenterprise programs in Nepal and Mongolia and a microloan program in Malawi. Utilizing her financial expertise, Ms. Lipson conducts institutional assessments and evaluations, market research and business planning.  Ms. Lipson served on the Advisory Board of Pro Mujer.

Lynn Martin

Director of Investors Relations, BlueOrchard Finance USA Inc.
Lynn Martin joined BlueOrchard Finance in the New York office, in March 2008, to serve current clients and expand the investor base in the US.  Previously, Lynn was Managing Director at Zephyr Management, L.P., an emerging markets private and public equity investment firm, with responsibility for client relations and marketing. From 1991 to 2004, Lynn was Managing Director at Credit Suisse Asset Management and a predecessor firm, Warburg Pincus Asset Management, where she built the highly successful Post Venture/Distribution Management equity investment business, globally.

Title of Talk:
“Financing Microfinance Institutions”

Elissa McCarter

Director of Development Finance, CHF International
Elissa McCarter manages CHF international’s microfinance, small business and housing portfolio in 11 countries around the world.  She has over ten years’ experience as a microfinance practitioner, having started up and managed two MFIs in Armenia and Turkey, and serving as resident advisor to MFIs in Africa, the Middle East, and Eastern Europe.  Elissa is the author of two books on microfinance mergers and has published several articles on new product development, women in microfinance, and middle market lending.  She received a MS in International Development from the joint degree program of Georgetown University School of Foreign Service and Institut d’Etudes Politiques de Paris.

CHF International is a 501(c)3 non-profit organization established in 1952 as the Foundation for Cooperative Housing, which, over the years, has evolved into a multi-sector international relief and development organization working in over 40 countries around the globe. CHF’s mission is to be a catalyst for long-lasting positive change in low- and moderate-income communities around the world, helping them to improve their social, economic, and environmental conditions.  Specific to microfinance, CHF operates a network of subsidiary companies that provide business and housing loans to low-income households, with a current portfolio outstanding of approximately $100 million. For more information visit www.chfinternational.org.

Karen McGuiness

Assistant Dean for Graduate Education & Lecturer in International Affairs
Woodrow Wilson School, Princeton University
Since she returned to WWS in the fall of 1996 (she is an MPA’85), Dean McGuiness has been advocating the integration of gender into the curriculum, and leads by example through her teaching in 501: The Politics of Public Policy. She has also taught courses on Bottom Up Approaches to Development, Gender and Development, Rural Development, Alternative Development Strategies, Social Movements, and Microfinance and Poverty Reduction. She was previously a Program Officer for the Ford Foundation in New York and then in New Delhi, directing a Program on Women’s Employment and Empowerment for India, Nepal and Sri Lanka. Her research interests include advocacy and capacity building in the nonprofit sector, pro-poor policies, women’s movements, and cooperatives as democratic alternatives, including thrift and credit associations as a more viable and empowering model of microfinance. She has lived in India for more than seven years, and in the fall semester 2000, she was the Faculty Coordinator for a study abroad program for American undergraduates focused on “Human Development in India.”

Arka Mukherjee

Co-Founder, Sarala Bank; Founder and CEO, Global IDs
Dr. Arka Mukherjee is the co-founder of Sarala Bank, a microfinance institution based in the state of Bengal in India. The MFI has grown at a dramatic rate since its launch in July 2006 and currently has nearly 50,000 clients with approximately 48,000 borrowers, catering primarily to women from disadvantaged communities. Dr. Mukherjee is also the Founder and CEO of Global IDs, a data integration software company based in New York City. Prior to Global IDs, Dr. Mukherjee worked in computational analytics for 15 years for KPMG and Andersen Consulting. He received his Masters degree from Indian Institute of Technology—Kanpur and received his Ph.D. from Princeton University.

Title of Talk:
“Sarala is Going Beyond Providing Credit”

Paula Pagniez

Microinsurance Practitioner
Based in Princeton, New Jersey, Paula Pagniez is a practitioner of the novel field of microinsurance. She is a firm believer in microfinance as a tool to bring socioeconomic development to underserved communities and has applied her extensive background in the nonprofit, government and financial private sectors of Latin America to the development of this innovative industry. Prior to this, she worked in Latin American insurance markets, where she started-up and directed the Argentine chapter of FISO, the first private Latin American Foundation for Occupational Health.

Title of Talk:
“Developing Microinsurance in Latin America”

Susan Salerno

Independent Consultant
Susan Salerno is an independent consultant specializing in development, sales, and management of Private Equity funds. Ms. Salerno consulted for the Grameen Foundation where, among other projects, she drafted an in-depth report on the microfinance industry. While a Director at UBS Private Banking, Ms. Salerno developed, sold, and marketed proprietary alternative investment products.  Ms. Salerno managed the development of large-scale commercial real estate projects, negotiated partnership agreements, underwrote commercial loans, and analyzed potential investments.  Ms. Salerno holds an MBA and a B.A. in Economics.

Title of Talk:
Microfinance: Then and Now

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A little more about Princeton Microfinance Organization…

In response to the strong campus interest in economics and finance as well as humanitarian issues displayed by the Princeton community, PMO was founded in January 2008 by a group of Princeton University students intrigued by the innovative idea of microfinance: “helping those in the developing world help themselves.” The goals of the group are two-fold: (1) promoting microfinance as a form of investment to promote economic development and (2) encouraging Princeton University students to enter this growing field.

Over the past year, the group has organized numerous events to raise awareness about microfinance on campus including the “5000 for $5000: Princeton Performs for Change” dance show, which raised over $2000 for FINCA in order establish a village bank. In addition, the organization has brought leaders in the field of microfinance to campus as part of its speaker series, featuring such speakers as Marcia Odell, Director of the women’s empowerment program WORTH, and Betsy Teutsch, Communications Director of Green Microfinance.

Current Officers:

Co-Presidents:
Ankit Bhatia ‘10 (abhatia@princeton.edu)
Jacob Hiller ‘10 (jhiller@princeton.edu)

Business Manager:
Alison Carey ‘11 (acarey@princeton.edu)

Treasurer:
Blaine Finley ‘11 (afinley@princeton.edu)

Financial Chair:
Paul-Christain Petrescu ‘11 (ppetresc@princeton.edu)

Publicity Chair:
Malavika Balachandran ‘12 (mbalacha@princeton.edu)

Information Resources:
Aaron Horvath ‘10 (horvath@princeton.edu)

External Relations:
Becky Harper ‘10 (bharper@princeton.edu)
Bilhuda Rasheed ‘10 (brasheed@princeton.edu)

Additional Information:

Visit our web page at:
http://princetonmicrofinance.wordpress.com/
For more information on the 5000 for $5000 Dance Show:
http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/2008/09/29/21565/
For more information on the founding of the group:
http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/2008/03/25/20538/

PMO Colloquium Team:

Ankit Bhatia ’10, Colloquium Director	Neha Goel ‘11
Jacob Hiller ’10	Ting-Fung Chan ‘12
Alison Carey ’10	Wensheen Tong ‘12
Rebecca Harper ’10	Malavika Balachandran ‘12
Aaron Horvath ‘10	Yupeng Liu ‘12
Paul-Cristain Petrescu ‘11	Fatema Waliji ‘12
Blaine Finley ‘11	Mehek Punatar ‘12

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