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About Us
Bela Vora
Focus: Management and Marketing
As GreenMicrofinance Director of Operations, Bela brings strong business skills to her passion for mission based organizations. Her experience in business and financial management, combined with a solid background in marketing and advertising, provides a winning combination for ensuring strong operations of GreenMicrofinance.
Born and raised in Mumbai, Bela began her marketing career in Mumbai with Nexus Advertising as Account Executive. She was responsible for all aspects of the client’s annual advertising campaign, including strategy presentation, media buying, artwork creation, coordinating photo shoots and invoicing. She joined as a management trainee and in one year was reporting to the Managing Director servicing a client that represented 80% of the agency's billing.
After relocating the United States, Bela became Marketing Coordinator for a small on-line company, managing the presentation process of marketing the start-up company through seminars. She also conducted competitive analysis to restructure the company’s products.
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.
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Focus: Clean Energy, Biofuels
An accomplished senior executive, a dynamic leader and a proven innovator, teacher and serial entrepreneur, Dr. Kathleen Robbins brings more than twenty five years of successful leadership experience in all aspects of business management, business development, marketing and sales covering consumer products, computer hardware and software, and communications, including cellular and WiFi companies. She has a proven track record of identifying and capitalizing on profitable growth opportunities, expanding existing ones and developing staff.
With an engineering science degree from the United States Air Force Academy, Kathleen returned to graduate school and earned an MBA to round out her education. Upon completing the MBA program, Kathleen joined Procter & Gamble. While working with P&G she identified an unmet business need of P&G and along with a partner, created a company to meet this need. Customers eventually included consumer product companies such as Procter & Gamble, Carnation and G.D. Searle.
Transitioning from consumer products, Kathleen moved into high technology and held successful positions with computer manufacturer Wang Laboratories, consulting with Computer Sciences Corporation and executive leadership with Cellular One. Her career encompasses not only traditional management with extensive financial, operations, sales, marketing and business development expertise but as an entrepreneur and visionary leader able to identify and capitalize on new opportunities.
In 2003, Kathleen resigned from Cellular One upon completing her Doctor of Ministry to create an international organization based on her work in her doctoral dissertation. Her dissertation, The 4th Communications Revolution: Bringing a Voice to the Developing World forms the theoretical basis for this program. It envisions using technology to aid or create micro enterprises in developing countries that provide a sustainable source of income in the rural areas to the entrepreneur while providing cost effective access to modern information communications technology to her neighbors and friends and a profitable customer to the technology provider.
In 2005, Robbins returned from a short time with the Peace Corps in Botswana and has a lead an effort to provide access to information communications technology to people in developing countries living on $2 or less a day and is currently working in Haiti to replicate the hugely successful Grameen Village Phone program.
Kathleen oversees Green Microfinance Clean Energy Programs. She is now working on a biofuels program in Haiti which involves addressing environmental and rural economic issues in addition to energy availability. The program uses a non-edible plant native to Haiti that grows on land that has been deforested and upon which food corps will not grow. It is designed to ensure the small farmer is a major beneficiary in the biofuels revolution.
Throughout her career, Kathleen has demonstrated the ability to work with a wide spectrum of people, providing leadership that brings out the best in them. She brings her unique combination of education, experience and training to solve business challenges in ways that create long-term, sustainable win/win situations. |
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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. |
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THE ROLE OF DECENTRALIZED RENEWABLE ENERGY TECHNOLOGIES IN ADAPTATION TO CLIMATE CHANGE IN DEVELOPIN
Millennium Villages and Sustainable Communities (1146)