At Ten Thousand Villages, a non-profit fair trade organization, she started as a temporary seasonal help to support a new location and became the Store Manager within weeks.  The success of her store gave her an opportunity to rise to regional supervisory position.  She provided management expertise to six regional stores through recruitment and training, liaison with head office, implementation of customer service, inventory control and visual merchandising strategies.   She did extensive community

She is very passionate about free enterprise solutions to alleviating poverty and is immensely grateful for the opportunities to make a living while pursuing her passion.  She loves to read, travel and create memories with her wonderful family.

Focus: Microfinance Specialist
Joan has fifteen years of experience in international development, with a specialty in microfinance. She received her Master of Science degree in Development Management in 1986 from The American University in Washington , D.C.

She began her career with FINCA in El Salvador in 1990, working with John Hatch, President and Founder of FINCA, to create one of the first microfinance institutions in that country. That MFI, the Centro de Apoyo a la Microempresa, is still providing microfinance loans to thousands of poor women and changing their lives. She also worked with Catholic Relief Services in El Salvador , training a number of local partners in microfinance. Some of these partners have merged in the financial company Enlace, which currently reaches 13,000 microfinance clients.

Subsequently she became the supervisor of a group lending program in southern Viet Nam , a program that supported farmers, livestock producers, and microentrepreneurs with microloans. After Viet Nam , she became the supervisor of a program that provided small business loans to Palestinians in the West Bank for asset acquisition and working capital. In 1998, she became an independent consultant, and has worked with such organizations as UNCDF, the African Development Bank, the InterAmerican Development Bank, USAID, governments, NGOs, and others.

Her consulting work targets noncommercial and transforming institutions, including microfinance, small business, and rural finance institutions, as well as cooperatives and credit unions. Her skills include training and technical assistance, financial analysis, portfolio management, product development, the environmental impact of credit, management information systems, and monitoring and evaluation. She works in English, Spanish, and French.

In 2002, the year of the World Summit on Sustainable Development, Joan joined with her two colleagues in creating an initiative aimed at promoting the positive environmental impact of microenterprise, using microfinance as a tool. Green Microfinance is the result.

Focus: Outreach, University Partnerships 
As Outreach Officer, Greg uses his passion for microfinance to promote GreenMicrofinance on the web and through universities and local institutions.  A native of the Philadelphia suburbs, Greg uses his familiarity of area to expand the knowledge of GreenMicrofinance activities and its mission to students, local businesses, and other organizations.

Greg has lived for a total of 12 months in South America, where he studied in Chile and worked in Bolivia.  In Bolivia, he interned at Ayni Ruway, a non-profit NGO that is dedicated to the rehabilitation, education, and fair treatment of prisoners in the Cochabamba metropolitan area; a region that is the center of the drug trade in the country.  While interning, Greg created and carried out a project to make Ayni Ruway, a Fair Trade Organization (FTO), through becoming a member of IFAT (International Association of Fair Trade).  He also taught guitar and other Andean instruments to inmates.

Greg hopes to embark on a career in Microfinance and plans to attend graduate school next fall.  He has a B.A. in History/Political Science from Colorado College.

Juliane Kniebel-Hübner - Canada
Juliane is CEO of Calgary-based Naturener, which develops, owns and operates wind energy farms. She is overseeing operations in the United States and Canada. She has worked the last seven years in fields related to off-grid energy supply and microfinance developing countries. She received her Master of Business Administration and Engineering degree in Strategic Management and Electrical Engineering from the Technical University of Berlin, Germany.

Abhishek Lal, Co-Founder - US
Abhishek has been working with Green Microfinance from its inception. He has conducted workshops, initiated GMf projects, and developed trainings for MFIs. Abhishek has contributed to GMf’s education efforts by publishing articles on environment and microfinance topics in the Journal of Microfinance, and an international agriculture and development policy journal called IJARGE, in addition to various conference papers. Overseeing the launch of Green Microfinance’s Solar Lending Initiative, he has traveled to Haiti working with Fonkoze.

Bryan Benitez McClelland - Philippines
Bryan completed his Master of Environmental Studies degree at the University of Pennsylvania in 2007. Since 2007, Bryan has been living in the Philippines. He helps develop environmental programs for Gawad Kalinga, a local NGO that aims to eradicate poverty by building holistic communities for the poor. By training and working with local design teams, he has been introducing sustainable development principles and green building practices. One of his projects includes the construction of a demonstration-level ecovillage.

Scott Edward Anderson - U.S.
Scott Edward Anderson served most recently as vice president for global development at Ashoka, the global association of leading social entrepreneurs.  He is the founder-writer of The Green Skeptic weblog, which covers climate change, social entrepreneurs, microfinance, and clean tech innovations and investments.

For 15 years prior to joining Ashoka, Anderson served in a variety of development and marketing management positions at The Nature Conservancy (TNC). While at TNC, he was elected a John Sawhill Conservation Leadership Fellow and was part of its Marine Habitat Goal and Climate Change Strategy teams.

He is currently a Senior Fellow with the Environmental Leadership Program (ELP) and was part of the organizing committee behind ELP’s “Emerging Leaders, Emerging Solutions” climate change conference at the New Jersey Institute of Technology in 2007. leading social entrepreneurs, and serves on the advisory board of Green Microfinance, LLC. He is the founder-writer of The Green Skeptic weblog), which covers climate change, social entrepreneurs, microfinance, and clean tech innovations and investments.

Declan Conway - Ireland
Declan is an experienced entrepreneur specializing in the telecom sector, having founded telecom infrastructure companies and mobile carriers that operate globally. His career spans more than 20 years in the Telecommunications and Software industry.

Declan was founder of Openet Telecom Ltd, in 1999, the world leader in Real-Time Charging and Transactional Intelligence for the wireless market. Openet secured contracts with over 100 carriers globally including AT&T, Verizon Wireless, Orange Group, and BT and processes billions of dollars of transactions daily.  Declan served as President and Chairman of the Company until he exited in 2002 and sold his shares to a consortium of institutional investors. 

Openet has been recognized globally as a technology and industry leader, winning many industry awards. It continues to enjoy high year on year profitable growth and shareholders includes institutions such as Benchmark Capital, Orange, SAIC, Cross Atlantic & AIB.

Since exiting Openet, Declan has focused on technology investing and social entrepreneurship. He co-founded VOIP enabler Flint Telecom Ltd in 2004 (NASDAQ:SMOA), founded Kinsale Mobile Ltd in 2005 and his social ventures include the Encircle Foundation Ltd in 2003, as a vehicle to engage corporates and communities to support Corporate Social Responsibility.

Encircle established the world’s first GSM charity network, Call4care, a mobile network in partnership with Red Cross, Amnesty International, Cancer Research and other global charities as an efficient and transparent tool to raise money for these organizations. Call4care is currently operating profitably in Europe and the USA and supports projects in Africa, Asia and Central America in partnership with T-Mobile, KPN, AT&T and other carrier groups.

Prior to 1999, Declan headed sales and marketing in Europe for Vertel Corporation (NASDAQ: “VRTL”). Declan graduated from Dublin City University as an Electronic Engineer in 1988 and was a nominated finalist in the Ernst and Young Entrepreneur of the Year in 2001. Declan services on a number of advisory boards including Traidlinks, an Irish Aid funded organization supporting the development of the private sector in the developing world.

Lynne E. Dant - U.S.
Lynne has a background in global management and marketing, as well as business operations. In 2002, she completed her MBA at Wharton and has a chemical engineering degree from University of Dayton. She has a strong interest in microfinance and clean energy. She is Chair of the Dayton School of Engineering Advisory Council.

For the past 19 years, Lynne has worked with Rohm and Haas Company. Most recently she was Marketing Director of Architectural Coatings, leading a global marketing segment team, managing the global research portfolio and marketing a roadmap for a $1.2 billion business unit within an $8 billion specialty chemicals company. She was accountable for developing strategies, working closely with regional business groups to achieve strategic goals.

Recently she has joined Genscape, Inc. relocating to Louisville, Kentucky as VP of Operations and Controls.  Genscape, Inc., with operations in the US and Europe, is the world's only provider of critical, real-time energy generation and transmission data.