Courses & Events
Ms. Courtney McColgan
May 31, 2011
04:15 pm - 05:30 pm
Ms. Courtney McColgan founded Wokai along with Co-Founder & CEO, Casey Wilson. Courtney hosts an extensive background in the China microfinance industry working with such organizations as the United Nations Development Program, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, and PlaNet Finance. She also completed a Fulbright grant researching China’s informal lending sector from 2006-2007. After founding Wokai, Courtney worked as an investment banking analyst at Morgan Stanley and then transitioned to venture capital where she worked as an investment analyst on clean technology & China-related investments at Draper Fisher Jurvetson. Courtney graduated from the University of California at Berkeley with a BA in Economics and Chinese. During her time at Berkeley, Courtney spent over two years completing extensive language study at Tsinghua University and Middlebury College. Courtney is currently pursuing a joint degree MBA & MS in Energy and Resources at Stanford University.
Wokai is a 501(c)(3) non-profit dedicated to alleviating poverty in China through microfinance. Wokai’s approach uses the internet to allow contributors around the world to provide loan capital to borrowers in rural China. Through www.wokai.org, contributors loan as little as $10 to a borrower, collect repayments each month, and allocate capital to a new borrower at the end of the loan cycle. Since the website launch in November 2008, Wokai has raised over US$575,000 in loan capital, attracted 7,500 users, and empowered 650 borrowers. Wokai has been featured in CNN, Time, MSNBC, CNBC, Newsweek, CCTV, Phoenix TV, 三联生活周刊, and Bloomberg.
