Story
Gumball Capital started in February 2007 when we competed in the Stanford Entrepreneurship Week Challenge. We came in to the Challenge as a few kids interested microfinance, the act of giving small loans to help low-income entrepreneurs grow their businesses. We came out of the competition with a big group of microfinance evangelists who spread the word to tons of students, and raised over $1,800 for microfinance loans. We also took home the grand-prize for Most Value Created!
After our success at E-Week, Gumball Capital began in earnest. We incorporated over the summer of 2007 and created the Gumball Challenge, which was run at five colleges in November of 2007-08 and another 5 colleges in 2008-09.
In 2009-10, we were recognized in several competitions, received 501(c)3 tax-deductibility status, and ran the Challenge at 15 schools including a pilot of the Challenge at several high schools and one Challenge in Beijing!
Moving forward, we're looking to expand the Challenge, focusing on both colleges and high schools, and getting students around the world more involved with entrepreneurship and poverty alleviation.
Corps
Travis Kiefer
Executive Director
Travis is a rising senior at Stanford University majoring in Urban Studies with a concentration in Social Entrepreneurship and a minor in Computer Science. Since coming to Stanford, he has engaged himself thoroughly with the Stanford entrepreneurship community and is involved with many groups that focus on entrepreneurship, social entrepreneurship, and student activism. Travis got started with Gumball Capital by participating in the Challenge his freshman year and has somehow convinced a lot of people that he is pretty good at getting things done. When not busy with student groups, Gumball, and friends, you might see him running around the world.
Janelle Tiulentino
Managing Director
Janelle hails from Rio Vista, California, and is currently a senior at Stanford University. She is deciding between an interdisciplinary major in Symbolic Systems or Computer Science, though her interests are too difficult to capture in one major area. She is most invested in exploring the fusions between technology and innovation, international culture, and human interests. Janelle is actively involved in The Courage Project research team, the Stanford Student Enterprises Capital Group, the recently-founded Drawn Together organization, and various other service activities. Janelle loves to travel and spend time outdoors, read, and learn new languages.
Justin Lee
Challenge Director
Justin Lee is a sophomore from Honolulu, HI. He currently lives in FroSoCo and can't wait to get chewing with Gumball Capital!
Ping Li
Finance Director
Ping is a graduate student in Stanford Graduate School of Business. Her research uses advanced econometric models to help managers understand dynamics in various industries (banking industry, pharmaceutical industry and retailing industry). Her experience as a teaching assistant for an MBA Investment management course makes her fascinated with finance and investment. This passion leads her to various positions at Stanford: She was Funding Committee Chair of Graduate Student Council, and she is currently involved with the Charles R. Blyth Fund. Her work with Gumball Capital involves managing Gumball Capital's balance sheets and she is looking forward to contribute more to Gumball's annual report and future fund raising events.
Beatrice Wu
Web Project Manager
Beatrice is an International Relations major and Urban Studies minor. She is interested in international development and is passionate about social entrepreneurship as a tool to eliminate all the subpar equilibriums in the world. Her hometown is Kauai, Hawaii.
Zach Weiner
Website Officer
Zach is a sophomore at Stanford majoring in Symbolic Systems with a concentration in Human-Computer Interaction. He's particularly interested in the role of new web technologies in the social entrepreneurship space, recently starting DailyDollar.org and joined Gumball to pursue these interests. When away from the computer, Zach plays the piano, pets his dog, skis, and roots for the Yankees.
Katherine Chen
Creative Director
Katherine Chen is a Junior from Irvine, CA majoring in Computer Science with a focus in Human-Computer Interaction. She is inspired by the impact engineers can have in social entrepreneurship and the idea that sometimes a little faith--and a microloan--is enough to enable individuals to rise up from poverty. When she's not busy coding, Katherine enjoys baking cupcakes, playing spades, and practicing ukulele for Katherine and Clare's Sunshine Band.
Ian Chan
Challenge Coordinator
Ian hails from Hong Kong but has spent the last four years in a boarding school in CT. He is currently an enthusiastic freshman living in Serra and plans to major in Public Policy concentrating on how government can support the social sector. He is allergic to eggs and peanuts but loves to eat all the food he can.
Mailyn Fidler
Challenge Coordinator
Mailyn Fidler is a freshman from Indiana. She plans to combine policy and science in her studies at Stanford. Mailyn is interested in exploring ways that social entrepreneurs can run an economically and socially sustainable business. She became interested in entrepreneurship through her entrepreneur grandparents, who advised her to enter the business world using “ice cream money,” or to start small. She became curious about the power of ice cream money, or in this case, gumball money, and wants to see just how far a little bit of entrepreneurial spirit can go.
Board of Directors
Sophia Tu
Chairperson
Sophia graduated from Stanford in 2008 with a major in Science, Technology, and Society. She previously served as Gumball Capital's Outreach and Executive Director. She is interested in how information and communication technologies can be used to address unmet social needs and advocate for social justice, and has spent time working with an NGO in Ecuador on these issues. While in southern India, witnessing the transformative effect of microfinance on gender power dynamics reinforced her passion for microfinance. Sophia is currently a Coro Fellow in Public Affairs in New York City.
Jason Shen
Finance Chair
Jason is pursuing an MS in Biological Sciences at Stanford University. He is also serving as co-chair of Cardinal Council, Stanford's student athlete advisory council and has previously held leadership positions at Stanford Scientific and the Unofficial Stanford Blog. He has enjoyed helping Gumball grow and is excited to take expand its reach and impact. J.S. earned a BS in Biological Science with interdisciplinary honors in 2008.
Bilal Mahmood
Member
Bilal is a Biology/Economics student at Stanford University, and responsible for managing the operations of Gumball Capital's seven departments. Having studied in both the United States and Pakistan, he has developed a keen ambition in alleviating global poverty. Recently, he consulted for KZO-Networks which is expanding education to rural villages in Pakistan through the web-portal ED-LINKS program. Bilal has also worked as an intern in Google's AdSense Policy division, and conducted regenerative medicine research at the Stanford Medical School. In the future, he aims to apply his knowledge and experiences to driving Biotech ventures, particularly in his native land of Pakistan. Bilal is also an avid Muay Thai fighter, and loves comic books, video games, and pizza.
Maria Matsu
Member
Maria is a retired banker who is excited about inspiring creativity in youth to raise money to alleviate poverty. At Bank of America, she worked as a financial analyst and project manager conducting efficiency studies, evaluating investment proposals, and preparing pricing and profitability analysis. Prior to the bank, she was a management consultant and owned a bakery. Her volunteer work includes serving as Chairperson of Nihonmachi Little Friends, a Japanese bilingual childcare non-profit. She spends her time traveling extensively, listening to live jazz, hiking, bicycling, and raising two children.
Kerry Philp
Member
Kerry is senior marketing manager at Schwab Charitable, where she helped launch an innovative program that enables Schwab Charitable donors to set aside a portion of their Charitable Gift Accounts to support global microfinance initiatives. Previously, she was the executive director at Mission Learning Center, a San Francisco-based education nonprofit. Kerry served in the Peace Corps in Guinea and Albania and is a proud graduate of Stanford's School of Education. In her spare time you can find her on a run in Golden Gate Park or with a book in her hand.
Advisory Board
Jessica Jackley
Advisor
Jessica Jackley is a co-founder of Kiva.org, the world's first peer-to-peer online microlending website. Named as one of the top ideas in 2006 by the New York Times Magazine and called ÒrevolutionaryÓ by the BBC, Kiva (www.kiva.org) lets internet users lend as little as $25 to specific developing world entrepreneurs, providing affordable capital to help them start or expand a small business. Kiva has been one of the fastest-growing social benefit websites in history, and since its founding in 2005, has loaned over $100M from lenders to entrepreneurs across 182 countries, and has been featured in a wide array of media and press including Oprah, the Today Show, CNN, BBC, NBC, ABC, PBS, NPR, the WSJ, NYTimes, The Economist, and more.
Jessica is currently CEO of ProFounder, a new platform allowing small businesses in the U.S. to access start-up funding through community involvement. Jessica also currently teaches Global Entrepreneurship at the Marshall School of Business at USC, and is a Fellow at Stanford University's new Center for Philanthropy and Civil Society.
Jessica holds an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business with Certificates in Global Management and Public Management, and a BA in Philosophy and Political Science from Bucknell University.
David Hornik
Advisor
David is a General Partner with
August Capital and the creator and Executive Producer of The Lobby Conference. He invests broadly in information technology companies, with a focus on consumer facing software and services, enterprise applications and infrastructure software. He is the author of the first Venture Capital blog, VentureBlog. Prior to joining August Capital, David was an intellectual property and corporate attorney at Venture Law Group, Cravath Swaine & Moore, and Perkins Coie LLP. David teaches business and law at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business and writes about the venture capital industry in
VentureBlog.
Mark Nelson
Advisor
PACTFund is initially providing collaborative, P2P social micro-capital for cool social ventures and causes around the world--and will then get even more interesting. My job is laying out the initial vision, attracting the right people to collaborate, and catalyzing the ongoing collective creation process.
If this sounds interesting to you, please check out
www.pactfund.com for a more detailed overview. If you're still intrigued after that, please consider signing up for our beta. I would be delighted to have you join us
Bruce Deming
Attorney
Bruce Deming is a corporate partner in Covington & Burling's law office in San Francisco. Bruce has a broad-based corporate and securities transactional and advisory practice, with extensive experience in domestic and cross-border mergers and acquisitions, private equity and venture capital transactions, securities offerings and capital markets activities.Bruce is active in a number of professional and community-based organizations, including serving as Co-Chair of the Corporations Committee of the California State Bar; President of the board of Support for Families of Children with Disabilities; and as board member or advisory council for Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund, the Peter M. Cicchino Social Justice Foundation and Our Family.
Kalvin Wang
Founder
Kalvin founded Gumball Capital in March 2007 with 25,000 gumballs in his dorm room and served as its first Executive Director. He is a Computer Science major who grew up in Silicon Valley watching the bubble grow and pop. With strong interests in social change, technology, and entrepreneurship, he enjoys chewing on scalable social ventures like Kiva, DonorsChoose, and Gumball Capital. He is currently working at Virgance.
Ellen Kim
Founder
Ellen was formerly the Chief Executive Officer of Gumball Capital before she earned an MBA from Stanford Graduate School of Business in 2008. Before Stanford she worked for three years at Citigroup in the Public Finance Investment Banking Division and was an Associate in the department's Technology/Financial Structuring group. During that time she was responsible for modeling innovative debt structures for a variety of clients, including the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, the City of New York, and Catholic Healthcare West. At the GSB, Ellen was co-President of the Social Venture Club and was on the 2007-2008 Executive Team for the Public Management Initiative, ReelImpact. She has a BS in Economics from Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Rishan Mohammad
Founder
No bio.
Jeff Seibert
Founder
No bio.
Wendi Chiong
Founder
No bio.
Stephanie Shih
Founder
No bio.
Jessica Richman
Founder
Jessica was part of the found Gumball team that worked feverishly that weekend to gather donations on post-its, and also helped put together the original website. Jessica earned an A.B. in Economics and a B.S. in Science, Technology & Society with Honors at Stanford University and is now a Clarendon Fellow at the Oxford Internet Institute. She has been involved in social entrepreneurship projects with the Grameen Bank, the Women's Institute for Financial Education, and is hard at work on a (stealth) project. Chosen as a member of the USA Today All-Academic First Team, she is also a recipient of the Richard Kovacevich Scholarship for Social Entrepreneurship, the Carpe Diem Scholarship, the Mensa Scholarship, the Gilman International Scholarship from the US Congress, and other awards.
Alumni
Wesley Leung
General Editor
Wesley is a freshman at Stanford University planning on majoring in Computer Science. He is very excited about entrepreneurship, especially with leveraging the web to promote initiatives such as microfinance. After his studies, Wesley hopes to explore and help better communities around the world by joining the Peace Corps. In his spare time he enjoys tinkering with various projects, reading, and camping. Wesley's interests also include life and being unprepared for creative accidents.
Jason Chua
Creative Director
Jason is a junior majoring in Product Design and thinking about a minor in Architectural Design. He's excited to be working with Gumball Capital on awesome projects, and is looking forward to learning a lot from all the talented people around him. Jason enjoys food, sleep, and hanging out with people more interesting than he is.
Daniel Posch
Web Director
Daniel Posch is a sophomore majoring in Computer Science. He wants to help ensure that people with initiative can find opportunity no matter where they are or how much money they have, and is excited about the potential of microfinance to make that happen. He's also excited about applying the power and reach of web applications to promote microlending. In his spare time, he hacks, builds stuff, and plays the occasional game of Ultimate. He sometimes misses roaming the wide streets of Utah in his old Eurovan. Despite this, there's no place he'd rather be than right here, right now.
Erin Parker
Finance Director
Erin is a junior from the Philippines majoring in Economics and Math. She came to Stanford to pursue her interest in finance, and is currently a director in the Charles R. Blyth Fund and an analyst with Stanford Finance. Her work with Gumball Capital involves managing Gumball Capital's balance sheets and general finances. Microfinance was a natural extension of her interest in finance and public service. In her free time Erin enjoys running, hiking, and studying medieval literature
Ashni Mohnot
Ashni graduated from Stanford University with a B.A. in Human Biology (International Health focus) and English (2005) and M.A. in International Comparative Education in 2006. She now works as Director of Education for Stanford's Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute. She also works for Mobile Metrix and is developing her own award-winning social venture on eliminating the financial barrier to education through future income loans. Besides international development and social entrepreneurship, she is interested in innovation, design, Silicon Valley startups, and emerging web technologies, specifically their application to advance the citizen sector. She grew up in Bombay, India and loves writing fiction.
Lucas Hughes
Lucas is senior majoring in Management Sciences and Engineering and is serving as Financial Manager at the Suites Eating Clubs. He manages all bank account-statements, financial reimbursements to employees, and overall budget analysis/projections. He was also responsible for distributing Gumball Challenge revenue in microloans through Kiva.org, and managing the organization's Kiva account. He enjoys skiing and rock climbing.
Jeffrey Wong
Jeff is a sophomore double majoring in Economics and Computer Science at Stanford University. He is very interested in development economics and joined Gumball as an outreach officer in 2008. Jeff is passionate about education, particularly in curriculum design, and has designed and created curriculum in the past for middle school and high school math classes. He hopes to complete an honors thesis in Economics on the Economics of Education. In his spare time he likes to program PC games.
Kelsey Walker
Kelsey is a senior at Stanford University majoring in Sociology with a special interest in product design. At Gumball she was responsible for developing and maintaining its many programs and getting young people as excited as she is about social innovation. When not trying to shamelessly promote a better world, Kelsey enjoys running, day-dreaming in the California sun, and making artistic messes.
Salina Truong
Salina is a junior majoring in Psychology and Life. She loves engaging students with entrepreneurship and is excited to see Gumball bring its programs to high school students. She is currently involved with several business organizations including Stanford Consulting, BASES, and Alpha Kappa Psi. In her free time, she enjoys Texas Hold ÔEm, community service, and home improvement. Salina prides herself as an amateur chef and avid lucid dreamer.
Becky Johnson
Becky Johnson is a junior planning to double major in Psychology and Economics. She is interested in the intersection of these two fields, and is currently doing research in the Psychology department in neuroeconomics and the brain processes behind economic decision making. This past summer, Becky was awarded a fellowship with the Psychology Department to pursue a research internship. Outside of Gumball, Becky is a director for WYSE, an all-female mentorship group that works with middle school students in East Palo Alto, a Conference Director for Stanford Women in Business, and a Vice President of Membership for Delta Delta Delta sorority.
Jackie Lho
Jackie is a Junior at Stanford University who plans to major in Economics and minor in Chinese. Having always been interested in the business world, she joined Gumball Capital to learn about social entrepreneurship and has found the experience to be very rewarding so far.
Kelly Ding
Kelly Ding is a sophomore at Stanford, planning on majoring in International Relations and possibly Philosophy. She is involved in Stanford Women in Business and Alpha Kappa Delta Phi.
Sumaiya Talukdar
Sumaiya is a recent law school graduate. Born in Bangladesh, she has seen the powerful impact of the Grameen Bank and believes in the incredible power of microfinance. She can't wait to change the world, one person at a time!
Marimar Jauregui
Marimar is a sophomore at Stanford University planning on majoring in Public Policy and Economics. Having firstandedly seen the need for entrepreneurship in the countries where she's lived, Mexico and Brazil, she understands the value of microfinance very clearly. Marimar is also one of the founding members of Students for Engagement and Activism in Microfinance at Stanford.
Shelly Ni
Shelly is a senior at Stanford studying Product Design. In the future, she hopes to use her skills/obsession with aesthetics & design thinking for The Power of Good. She's interested in sustainability, urban design, and design for social change. When she's not tinkering on her latest project, tweaking fonts in the latest Gumball brochure, or making art for fun, Shelly also enjoys writing about her interests in the third person, culinary experimentation, taking walks, interpretive dance, and trees.
Crystal Yan
Crystal Yan is @crystalcy on Twitter. She is a trilingual Chinese American high school senior in the San Francisco Bay Area. As a serial social entrepreneur with a focus on youth marketing and online social media strategy, she has collaborated with a socially responsible start-up to start an internship program for high school and college students, worked as a consultant in a consulting firm to help a non-profit expand its donor and volunteer program in its 50 centers throughout the Bay Area, won the national championship scholarship for a debate-like case study competition in Banking and Financial Systems, and worked pro-bono on graphic design projects for the largest student business organization in the world, an international non-profit, an award-winning robotics team, and many more (see crystaly.carbonmade.com). Crystal also sits on the board of a governing body that oversees 6,000+ student leaders and leads a language honor society chapter that runs a nationally-acclaimed debate program. Crystal aspires to attend a four-year college and contribute to the fields of global business, foreign affairs, corporate philanthropy or international aid.
Jillian Wells
Jillian Wells is currentlty studying Industrial design at CA college of the Arts. As Jillian pursues her career in the arts she is looking for opportunities to serve as well as create. This past spring Jillian traveled to Guatemala to work with native craftsmen on developing products that they could sell to expand their income.
Joy Chua
Joy Chua is a senior at Brown University studying international relations. She is deeply involved in Brown's Social Entrepreneurship community and is currently TAing a class on the subject. Joy enjoys yoga, reading, travel and visiting her home in the Phillipines.
Taher Ezzi
Taher Ezzi is an international student from Kenya planning to major in Mechanical Engineering with a possible minor in some other cool subject (Haven't decided yet). While in Kenya he actively participated in and helped organize a number of social initiatives aimed at helping the less fortunate members of society. He was introduced to the fascinating world of social entrepreneurship during the ASB program ÒSocial entrepreneurship in the Bay AreaÓ. In his free time he enjoys sitting under the warm Californian sun with his laptop and connecting with his friends back home via Facebook.
