This Thursday at Change, Kushal Chakrabarti will be discussing his
work bringing student loans to the developing world through the power
of person-to-person microfinance. Please note the new room number.
"Kushal is the co-founder and CEO of Vittana. Vittana makes it
possible for students around the world to get a student loan to finish
college. We work with microfinance organizations to develop student
loan programs from scratch, often for the first time ever in their
respective countries. Students from those programs appear on
http://vittana.org and, because of tiny $25 and $50 loans made by
people around the world, are able to attend college, get real degrees,
and find better jobs. Today, there are student loans in Peru, Paraguay
and Nicaragua because of Vittana with new programs spinning up
Mongolia, Cambodia, Philippines and many other countries.
In past lives, Kushal was a computational biologist (we couldn’t make
that up if we tried) and artificial intelligence expert. Most
recently, he ran the recommendations team (“We thought you might like
Y because you bought X”) at Amazon.com. He was recently voted as the
“#1 game-changer” in philanthropy by Huffington Post."
What: Kushal Chakrabarti on Enabling Student Loans in the Developing World
When: Thursday, January 7 at Noon
Where: UW, Paul Allen Center, Room 203