Lois Rho: Grameen Foundation
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This past summer, I worked as a program intern in the Capital Markets division of Grameen Foundation in Washington DC. Grameen Foundation is an organization focused on empowering the world’s poorest through microfinance. The foundation shares the heritage and the spirit of Grameen Banks started by Dr. Muhammad Yunus in Bangladesh. While Grameen Banks are the microfinance institutions (MFIs), Grameen Foundation is a not-for-profit established in 1997 to support MFIs around the world. The areas of support include technology, industry knowledge sharing and access to capital markets.
The capital markets group facilitates MFIs’ commercial funding process in order to ultimately help strengthen the sustainability of the MFIs. In light of this goal, I worked on three projects:
1) Create investment readiness materials: As MFIs enter the growth phase they strive to become self sustaining by depending less on donor funding. The investment readiness materials, including pitchbooks, valuation and M&A guidelines, assist MFIs in working directly with commercial lenders and private investors.
2) Guarantee backed debt transaction: I worked on a $900k guarantee backed loan offering for a Moroccan MFI. Although $900k seems like a small amount of money, this is typical of a smaller MFI just entering the growth phase. I conducted financial statement analysis and due diligence for the deal. I also got to brush up on my French while speaking with the management of the MFI.
3) An equity investment proposal: This was the largest project during my internship. Grameen Foundation is looking for ways to better serve the microfinance community and have realized that one of the most effective ways would be to become a direct investor of MFIs. I worked on a proposal to create a private equity arm within the Foundation, which is to be presented to the Foundation’s board.
The microfinance industry landscape is changing day by day. It was truly exciting not only to learn about the rapid changes taking place by working with the “pioneers†of the industry but to work on a proposal that touched on the very core mission of the organization.
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More 2007 Summer Internships »
I interned for One Acre Fund, a startup NGO based in western Kenya. One Acre Fund, founded by Andrew Youn (Yale ‘00), provides targeted microloans to extremely poor farmers in an effort to help them pull themselves out of poverty. My responsibilities for the summer were two-fold: First, I developed a Monitoring and Evaluation system to allow the organization to measure its impact on its participant farmers. This involved researching best practices in program evaluation, developing and field-testing a baseline survey, training our local staff to administer the survey, and building a data entry business that can scale with the organization. The second half of my job was to revise the curriculum for One Acre Fund’s primary cash crop: passion fruit. Among other things, I learned how to build manure compost piles and apply fertilizer to passion fruit fields. The summer was an incredibly valuable personal and professional experience and I was enormously impressed by the organization Andrew has built.
I spent the summer working at the Grameen Foundation in Washington, DC. The Grameen Foundation is a microfinance organization working to alleviate global poverty. I worked with the Sub-Saharan Africa Division, the youngest regional division. One of Grameen’s goals for their African expansion is to encourage microfinance in rural areas. Through extensive research and interviews with several development experts, I created a strategic plan to support rural microfinance efforts as they expand in Sub-Saharan Africa. This included analyzing various risk mitigation techniques, product development, technological solutions and value chain finance.
As part of my 12-week internship with Morgan Stanley’s Investment Banking Summer Associate program, I completed a 2-week rotation with Morgan Stanley’s Microfinance Institutions Group (MFIG). Microfinance institutions (MFIs) make microloans to the poor who are generally considered “unbankable.” Morgan Stanley’s recent formation of MFIG marked the first time that a global investment bank has established a group dedicated to providing microfinance institutions with investment banking services and products, including capital advisory, risk management, foreign exchange, derivatives, as well as the structuring and distribution of microfinance investment funds. The group’s transactions have involved the securitization of microfinance loans, and have provided over $210M to 33 MFIs in 15 countries via two CLOs (collateralized loan obligations) backed entirely by microfinance loans.
Mary Ellen Iskenderian, SOM’86, was named President and CEO of Women’s World Banking this past September. Heading up a global non-profit organization, Ms. Iskenderian oversees its inspiring mission of supporting economic development for low-income women by providing access to finance, knowledge, and markets.
