UCLA selects Internet micro-loaning entrepreneur Jessica Jackley to be 2012 commencement speaker

Jessica Jackley, an Internet micro-loaning entrepreneur, will be the commencement speaker for the 2012 College of Letters and Science’s graduation ceremony.

Jackley is part of a theme of transformative leadership that the 2012 commencement ceremony will try to capture, said Judith Smith, UCLA dean and vice provost for undergraduate education. Jackley was announced as the speaker on Thursday.

“We wanted to identify an individual that has shown leadership which transforms society, and we found that in (Jackley),” Smith said.

Jackley was chosen as the speaker by a cabinet made up of the five deans of the College of Letters and Science, said Smith, who is the chair of the cabinet. This cabinet received a long list of potential candidates for the commencement-speaking job, all in the early stages of their careers.

The board found Jackley particularly intriguing because of her relation to social networking, and she was their first choice for the post, Smith said.

“(Jackley) represents someone who is creating transformational change within 10 years of graduating, and that’s the kind of aspiration we want to share with students,” Smith said. “She demonstrates to students that (they) do not have to have a long and illustrious career to achieve major accomplishments, but can start creating change immediately after leaving (UCLA).”

Jackley earned her undergraduate degree from Bucknell University and her master’s in business administration at Stanford Graduate School of Business. She was also the 2012 recipient of the Symons Innovator Award from the National Center for Women and Information Technology, Smith said.

She had no experience in micro-financing, the practice of lending financial services to people who lack the traditional banking resources, and had never studied finance before she started her website Kiva.org, Jackley said.

“I heard a lecture about micro-finance about two years out of undergrad and thought to myself, “˜That is what I want to do,'” Jackley said.

She then quit her first job after graduate school as a program manager at the Stanford Graduate School of Business and moved to East Africa to work for a small nonprofit there, where she met inspiring small business owners and entrepreneurs whose stories she wanted to tell.

These interactions led to Kiva.org, which she co-founded in 2005. The website allows Internet users to lend money to entrepreneurs around the world to help them jump-start or expand their small businesses.

Jackley also co-founded and served as CEO of ProFounder, a site which provides U.S. small business owners the opportunity to participate in “crowd funding,” or pooling of money and resources together through the Internet community.

Some students said they had not heard of Jackley before she was announced as the speaker. Others, like Alex Isawa, a fourth-year philosophy and human biology and society student who will be graduating this year, had heard her name connected with micro-financing.

“I think the purpose of the commencement speaker is to impart wisdom,” Isawa said. “(Jackley) is recognized by society to be transformational, and I feel there’s a precedent for having successful business leaders speak.”

This is not the first time Jackley has addressed a graduation ceremony. Aside from some recent successes in motivational speaking, Jackley was also a speaker at both her high school and undergraduate graduations, she said.

“I find it a gift to have the opportunity to share something you believe in with people,” Jackley said. “I think everybody has a story to share, so it is a real honor that mine is valuable to people (at UCLA).”

The College of Letters and Science’s commencement ceremony will take place on June 15.

With contributing reports by Ryland Lu, Bruin contributor.