Kiva

October 25, 2013 – Colette van der Ven

On October 18, 2013, LIDS held its annual symposium, this year focusing on the linkages and tensions between trade, development, and entrepreneurship. With sponsorship from the law firms of Allen & Overy, Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, Sidley Austin, and Skadden, as well as the Harvard Milbank Tweed Fund and the Harvard International Legal Studies Program, the event was a great success and drew over 100 attendees!

The day-long event was kicked off by Abhijit Banerjee, who provided a powerful keynote address challenging popular understandings of entrepreneurship. Professor Banerjee’s address was followed by two panels: the first focused on barriers to scaling-up entrepreneurship, and the second addressed how to better connect micro-level problems to macro-level trade policy.

Professor Banerjee spoke about the challenges of entrepreneurship amongst the poor and whether entrepreneurship amongst the poor really creates a pathway for growth. He highlighted the importance of differentiating between survival-driven entrepreneurship and growth-driven entrepreneurship and drew attention to the fact that when the poor receive micro-credit loans, they often don’t use it to expand the business but, just like the middle class, buy comfort items instead, like TVs or motorcycles.

The first panel, moderated by Simon Winter, Senior Vice President at Technoserve, focused on capacity and linkage constraints to entrepreneurship, as well as legal and policy barriers. Mara Bolis, Senior Advisor at Oxfam, highlighted the psychological barriers entrepreneurial women face in developing. Austin Choi, General counsel of Kiva, illustrated the need for legal entrepreneurship by explaining how Kiva, an online lending platform, has been pushing to change the Securities Exchange Act to legalize crowdfunding. Simon Winter specifically focused on the importance of removing structural barriers to create systematic change.

The second panel, moderated by Katrin Kuhlmann, President and founder of the New Markets Lab, focused on linking micro-level growth to macro-level policy. Katrin laid the foundation by expanding the notion of “trade” to encompass not just the cross-border passage of goods, but also multiple levels of transactions along the value chain, such as land rights, taxation issues, taxes, etc. She highlighted the importance of tailoring macro-level policies to specific economic opportunities on the ground in order to unlock economic opportunities and entrepreneurship and make regulation more effective. Katrin then illustrated an application of this methodology by describing TransFarm Africa’s success story in revitalizing Tanzania’s seed potato market.

Mark Wu, Assistant Professor at Harvard Law School, highlighted the importance of household savings to move out of poverty. One way to do this is through creating manufacturing jobs. Professor Wu went beyond analyzing the demand side of labor market failures—the creation of jobs—and stressed the importance of labor supply, focusing on fertility rates. He further addressed the inefficiency of domestic markets and motivated students to stay involved, expressing that a lot of work remains to be done to better link entrepreneurs to those interested in buying and selling, both domestically and globally.

Joost Pauwelyn, Professor of International Law and Co-Director of the Centre for Trade and Economic Integration at the Graduate Institute in Geneva, focused mainly on the mismatch in supply and demand with regard to providing legal expertise. A handful of expensive, mainly US, law firms dominate the field, and there is little transfer of knowledge to other players, especially firms in developing countries. To bridge this gap, Professor Pauwelyn has created TradeLab, an online platform that aims to bridge the gap in the legal expertise market by enabling anyone to post trade-related questions, which are answered, in Wikipedia style, by anyone, both trade experts and non-experts, who have the answer.

The message students took away from the symposium was that it is possible to be a lawyer and innovative; to be a lawyer and think outside the box; to be a lawyer and to be part of the solution, not the problem, to major structural impediments in entrepreneurship, development, and trade!

November 18, 2011 – Amreeta Mathai

If you’ve been wondering how to embark upon a legal career in microfinance – the perennial hot topic in international development – you’ll be interested to know what the panelists in LIDS’ recent careers event had to say.

The panelists included Austin Choi – General Counsel for Kiva, Deborah Drake – Vice President at the Center for Financial Inclusion at ACCION International and Jennifer Chien – Policy Consultant at CGAP/World Bank Group. Below you’ll find an edited transcript of the panelists’ responses to questions about their careers and what they look for in prospective employees.

Q: Can you tell us about your organizations?

Choi: Kiva is a personal microlending platform. Our mission is to connect people through lending for the sake of alleviating poverty. We work with on the ground microfinance institutions. These institutions post their clients’ project profiles on our website and people who visit the website can lend.

Drake: ACCION International is a network non-profit. We work with non-profits, finance companies and other types of finance institutions to support the growth of financial organizations that provide access to credit to low income and impoverished communities around the world.

Chien: The Consultative Group to Assist the Poor (CGAP) is not a microfinance institution. We are more like a think tank for the industry as a whole. We work at the macro level with policy makers and donors. I work on the policy team – it’s a small team of former lawyers who work on the intersection of law and microfinance.

Q: What do you do on a daily basis? How did you prepare for this role?

Choi: I am Kiva’s general counsel. I work on issues of compliance at an organizational and transactional level. This involves working with the microfinance partners internationally. Legal questions could involve issues such as how Dodd-Frank/non-profit/securities regulation laws affect what Kiva is able to do. I also support internal teams. For example, if teams want to use new software, or if we want to set up a new partner in Kenya, I work out the legal logistics. In terms of how I wound up here, I studied development economics in undergrad. Then I started working at a venture capital firm figuring out how to structure deals and how to manage risk. But then I wanted to go back to development and figure out how to apply all this in a development field.

Drake: I look at the supple side of microfinance – what investors are investing in microfinance? I also look at governance issues. 20 years ago, there were no roles for a lawyer at ACCION but now we have four to five lawyers. I have spent a lot of time looking at the enabling environment – what needs to be done to make microfinance institutions grow? I work with governments that are trying to create regulatory environments that encourage microfinance growth. I was at the World Bank and came into microfinance from there. I have a background as a commercial banker.

Chien: Microfinance has evolved substantially in the last decade and I focus on consumer protection issues and branches banking. I am currently a consultant to various projects. For example, I am working on a research publication on disclosure regulations – an aspect of consumer regulations. I am also working with Bank of Namibia to allow deposits from microfinance institutions. I was in management consulting for a few years after undergraduate. Then I worked at the World Council of Credit Unions. After law school, I worked for a firm for a few years – to pay off my loans. Then I had to do a lot of networking and finally made my way to CGAP.

Q: What would you look for from a resume?

Choi: Something that demonstrates a capacity to get a job done with limited resources. Perhaps that you’ve worked with a small team or an organization that is trying to address an issue with limited resources. The reality of working for a non-profit is that you have to pull a rabbit out of a hat with limited resources. Some of the job requires on the ground experience. It depends on the job but banking or internet banking experience can be helpful.

Drake: I echo what Austin said – you should be able to do things relatively quickly with limited resources and work with people who don’t necessarily know what it means to be a lawyer. You will be working with passionate people who are very smart – but you in some ways are getting in their way. It requires patience and flexibility. Working in this environment can be frustrating when you are coming from a corporate law firm.

Chien: We look for regulation CVs and international experience. In the field is always better. Something involving legal analysis is great. There aren’t a ton of positions and the ones available tend to be part time. The policy team isn’t very large and the people on it are very technical. We tend to need technical expertise in a particular topic. Be flexible.

Tag: Kiva

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