Keynote Speaker - Elizabeth Funk

Elizabeth Funk is actively involved in supporting rapid growth and commercialization in the Microfinance industry, which provides small loans to the world’s poor allowing them to start businesses and build their own way out of poverty. She is the Chairman of the Board of Unitus, which catalyzes accelerated growth of promising microfinance organizations around the world. She is also a co-founder and serves on the Board of Unitus’ for-profit sister company, Unitus Investment Group, which runs a family of for-profit funds and entities designed to mobilize invested dollars towards the alleviation of poverty.

Ms. Funk is the founder and CEO of the Dignity Fund, an investment vehicle designed to attract investment dollars to finance growth in the Microfinance industry. She serves on the board of Unitus’ first equity investment, Ujjivan, which is based in India, and serves on the Board of Directors of Deutsche Bank’s Global Microfinance Consortium Fund. Ms. Funk is a co-founder and serves on the board of the Silicon Valley Microfinance Network, and was the founding Chairman of the Board of MicroPlace, an internet-based Microfinance investment platform sold in 2006 to EBay.

Ms. Funk is a co-owner and the Chairman of the Board of Imperial Parking, a parking services business based in Hong Kong. She also owns a land development and ecological preservation project in Belize. Until 2007 Ms. Funk served as the CEO of CML Global Capital, a diversified international investment firm, which was publicly traded until she helped privatize the firm in 2004.

Prior to joining CML, Ms. Funk was one of the earliest employees of Yahoo!, where she founded the Yahoo! Shopping service. She formulated Yahoo!’s initial shopping and commerce strategy, and helped grow that business to comprise a major source of Yahoo!’s revenues and customer usage. She also oversaw business development for Yahoo! Finance, Classifieds, Small Business, Yellow Pages, Auctions, Mail and Search. Ms. Funk spent four years at Microsoft Corporation where she served as a Product Manager for Microsoft Word and as one of the early members of the Microsoft Office team.

Ms. Funk is an active member of the Young President's Organization ("YPO") serving as the Chair of the Board of the Pacific Region and as a founder of Social Enterprise Networks, an initiative that brings together members on projects that “make a difference” in the world. Ms. Funk serves on the board of the Glide Economic Development Corporation, building housing developments for the homeless and working poor in downtown San Francisco. She is also a member of the Clinton Global Initiative.

Ms. Funk holds an undergraduate degree in International Relations and Economics with Honors from Stanford University and an MBA from Harvard Business School, where she graduated in 1996 as a Baker Scholar. She is a frequent speaker about Microfinance, to audiences such as at the US Department of State, the Forbes CEO Conference, and the Clinton Global Initiative. She has been profiled in publications including Forbes, the San Jose Mercury News, and Business Week. Ms. Funk is married, has two children, and lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Elizabeth Funk's Keynote Address (mp3).

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