Jessica Jackley is an entrepreneur, investor, and public speaker. Her work over the last decade has focused on financial inclusion, the sharing economy, and social justice as she has co-founded Kiva and ProFounder, two organizations focused on promoting development through microloans.
Kiva, one of her best known ventures, is a p2p (peer to peer) microlending website that allows people to invest as little as $25 to finance individual entrepreneurs worldwide. ProFounder is a similar website that works as a crowd funding platform for small US business entrepreneurs.
In addition to founding these two companies, Jackley was a former Visiting Scholar at Stanford University’s Center for Philanthropy and Civil Society, and also taught Entrepreneurial Design for Social Change at Drew University. She currently teaches Global Entrepreneurship at the Marshall School of Business at USC. Jackley is a Venture Partner with SparkLabs Global Ventures, as well as an investor and advisor with the Collaborative Fund. She also recently served as Walt Disney Imagineering’s first Entrepreneur in Residence, focusing on projects related to corporate citizenship, the sharing economy, and happiness.
She currently resides in Los Angeles with her husband, author Reza Aslan, and their three sons. Her first book, CLAY WATER BRICK: Finding Inspiration from Entrepreneurs Who Do the Most with the Least was published by Penguin Random House in June of 2015.