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While customers in the developed world can access the international banking system for capital, people in poor countries often resort to loan sharks who demand high fees in exchange for small loans. The Grameen Foundation offers tiny loans, financial services, and technology to help poor people—mostly women—start businesses and, ideally, escape poverty.
With an audience at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, Grameen Foundation President and CEO Alex Counts describes the principles and potential of microfinance. He also discusses:
Alex Counts is president and CEO of Grameen Foundation, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit that has grown to a global network of 52 microfinance partners in 22 countries. Counts became Grameen
Foundation’s first executive director in 1997, after several years of honing his skills and vision in microfinance and poverty reduction. A 1988 Cornell University graduate with a degree in economics, Counts’ commitment to poverty eradication deepened as a Fulbright scholar in Bangladesh. He then trained with Dr. Muhammad Yunus, the founder and managing director of the Grameen Bank.
Counts founded the Grameen Foundation in 1997 with a mere $6,000 in seed capital and a charge from Yunus. This new organization was to play the role of catalyst, channeling human, financial, and technological resources in the United States to support the growth of the poverty-focused microfinance movement.
Counts chairs the board of Project Enterprise in New York City and is a board member of Fonkoze USA. He is also a member of the board of advisors of the Katalysis Bootstrap Fund and a member of the editorial advisory board of Grameen Dialogue.
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