Recent News:

April 10, 2008
Larry Reed, an Academic Vice President of the Boulder Institute of Microfinance, has agreed to provide a keynote address at this year's conference. At the Boulder Institute of Microfinance, Mr. Reed is helping to organize and run Boulder's international training programs, academic conferences and executive retreats. Prior to this, he worked for Opportunity International for 23 years, his last position as Chief Executive Officer of the Opportunity International Network, which he held for 10 years. Opportunity's Partner Organizations include microfinance programs in Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe and Latin America, and support offices in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, New Zealand, the UK and the US.

Beginning his service with Opportunity-US in 1984, Larry has held a variety of senior positions within the organization. In 1991, he founded Opportunity's Africa Regional Office in Zimbabwe, and served as its Africa Regional Director until 1996. Upon returning to the US, he became Vice President of Opportunity-US for global operations.

Larry is the past chair of the Small Education Enterprise Promotion (SEEP) Network, a research and advocacy group of microfinance industry practitioners. Also, he was a plenary speaker at the 1999 Microcredit Summit Meeting of Councils in Abidjan, Ivory Coast and a featured speaker on microfinance at the 1999 World Parliament of Religions Conference in Cape Town, South Africa. He has also published several articles on microfinance and served as a contributor to "The New World of Microfinance" (Rhyne, Otero, et. Al., 1996), "Serving with the Poor in Africa" (Yamamori, Myers, Bediako and Reed) and "Globalization and the Kingdom of God" (Goudzwaard, 2001). Larry is a graduate of Wheaton College and the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University

March 31, 2008
Elizabeth Funk, Board Chair of UNITUS and CEO of CML Global Capital, has agreed to provide a keynote address at this year's conference. Elizabeth is President and CEO of CML Global Capital, an international real estate investment firm. She is active in the field of microfinance as a founder and the CEO of The Dignity Fund, a board member of Deutsche Bank's Global Microfinance Consortium, and the moderator of the Microfinance Forum of Young President's Organization (YPO). In addition, she serves on the boards of Ujjivan—a Unitus microfinance partner in Bangalore, India—and the Silicon Valley Microfinance Network.

Elizabeth is also active in various other nonprofit initiatives including serving as the Chairman of the Peace Action Network of YPO, a board member of the Glide Economic Development Corporation in San Francisco, and an Overseer of the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. Furthermore, Elizabeth serves on the boards of I-Spire in London, Imperial Parking in Hong Kong, and Aspen Properties in Calgary.

Before joining CML, Elizabeth was one of the earliest employees at Yahoo! where she founded the Yahoo! Shopping service and later headed e-commerce business development and strategic planning. Prior to Yahoo! she spent four years at Microsoft. Elizabeth holds an international relations and economics degree with honors from Stanford University and an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School, where she was a Baker Scholar.

March 7, 2008
Opportunity International has committed to sponsoring the Chicago Microfinance Conference at the Silver Level. A leader in microfinance, Opportunity International is a non-profit organization dedicated to helping the poor. They provide financial services to the poorest of the poor and train them in basic business practices so that they can work their way out of poverty. Their proven Trust Group model has brought success to millions of poor entrepreneurs around the world. By funding their clients, Opportunity International helps the poor start or expand a business which will enable the poor to develop a steady income, provide nutritious meals and education for their children, and create community-wide change.

For more information please visit: www.opportunity.org

February 18, 2008
The Center for International Business Education and Research (CIBER) at UCLA has committed to sponsoring the Chicago Microfinance Conference at the Silver Level. CIBER at UCLA is part of a network of 30 CIBER university centers created by the United States Omnibus Trade and Competitiveness Act of 1988. The UCLA Anderson CIBER grant 2006-2010 focuses on four management issues thought to be critical for maintaining US industry competitiveness in the next decade. They are intellectual property, international entrepreneurship, services industrialization and security/risk in global business. The client groups served by CIBER programs are students, faculty, cross campus centers and institutes and the business community at large. CIBER achieves its program goals in three ways: teaching and curriculum development; faculty development and research support; and outreach to the UCLA community and the Los Angeles business, diplomatic & education communities. UCLA CIBER supports teaching by providing funding to encourage new international course development and foreign language education for business at undergraduate and graduate levels. Faculty development and research support comes in the form of funds to support all aspects of international research project from the collection of data or purchase data bases to researcher assistance and travel to meetings and research sites. Finally, In its outreach efforts, CIBER works closely with other centers and institutes on the UCLA campus. Beginning within UCLA Anderson, CIBER has initiated and sponsored joint programs with the UCLA Forecast, provided funding support for Center for Management in the Information Economy, support the IS Associates to internationalize their meetings, jointly sponsored research efforts with the Price Center on international entrepreneurship and has supported Anderson’s renowned FEMBA Global Access Program (GAP). Outside of Anderson, CIBER works closely with a variety of other UCLA centers (The Asia Institute, Center for European and Eurasian Studies, Latin American Center, and African Studies Center) to put on joint programs of research and outreach to the business public.

For more information please visit: www.anderson.ucla.edu/x327.xml

February 10, 2008
The Zell Center for Risk Research has committed to sponsoring the Chicago Microfinance Conference at the Silver Level. The goal of the Zell Center is to promote the study and understanding of the way people perceive risk, the effects of these perceptions, and the management of risk. The center does this in two ways: first, by encouraging academic research in this area; and second, through facilitating the communication of the results of this research to a wide audience of academics, students and practitioners.

To encourage academic research in this area, particularly among Kellogg School faculty, the center provides financial support for faculty research. Center visitors are invited to speak and present materials to stimulate thinking in this field and work with Kellogg School faculty in producing new ideas. The center also supports the communication of relevant academic research to students, practitioners, and faculty in a number of ways, including sponsoring academic and student-led conferences, supporting the development of a curriculum focused on risk, providing scholarships for students pursuing studies in risk, and supporting the Kellogg School’s Asset Management Practicum.

For more information visit: www.kellogg.northwestern.edu/research/risk/