> Posted by Center Staff

Alex Counts, president and CEO of Grameen Foundation, speaks with community members in Banda Aceh, Indonesia.

Why do so many capable people put their lives into building the microfinance industry? What do they hope to accomplish? What motivates them? Why do they think microfinance is a solution? Are they pleased with the results?

The Center for Financial Inclusion is interviewing founders, pioneers, and entrepreneurs in order to answer these questions and capture the scale and impact of microfinance in today’s world.

During 2011, we’ll bring you a score of such ‘Microfinance Matters’  interviews from leaders around the globe. These authentic voices will speak about what is most meaningful to them in their work.

Today, we talk with a leader in the international dissemination of the Grameen model…

Alex Counts

Reaching Out to the Poorest

In the spring of 1987, Alex Counts, a student at Cornell University, wrote to Muhammad Yunus, founder of Grameen Bank, and expressed his interest in working with one of the world’s first microfinance institutions.

“God bless him, he wrote me back,” says Counts. That was the beginning of a career in microfinance that led Counts and other friends of Grameen Bank to the 1997 founding of Grameen Foundation, an independent organization that collaborates with microfinance organizations around the world to deepen services provided to the poorest and more remote communities…

To read more of the interview with Alex Counts, click here.