Julie Hanna

Last updated

Julie Hanna
Photo Julie Hanna - San Francisco.jpg
Born (1965-08-05) August 5, 1965 (age 58)
Sohag, Egypt
Occupation(s)Executive Board Chair Kiva
Special Advisor X (formerly Google X), Alphabet's Moonshot Factory
Venture Partner, Obvious Ventures

Julie Hanna (born August 5, 1965) is an Egyptian-born technologist, entrepreneur, investor and board director. She serves as Executive Chair of the Board of Kiva., [1] peer-peer lending and crowdfunding pioneer. She is Special Advisor to X (formerly Google X), Alphabet's Moonshot Factory and Venture Partner at Obvious Ventures.

Contents

In May 2015, President Barack Obama named Hanna Presidential Ambassador for Global Entrepreneurship [2] “to help develop the next generation of entrepreneurs.”

She is a former board member of the Esalen Institute and Mozilla Corporation and a founding executive of five Silicon Valley technology companies.

Escaping civil war during Black September in Jordan in 1970, she grew up in America and studied computer science at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.

Early life and education

Hanna was born in Sohag, Egypt. She moved with her family to Irbid, Jordan, where they found themselves on the front lines of Black September, the Jordanian civil war. After fleeing a column of tanks firing on her school, the family escaped and made their way to Beirut, Lebanon. Shortly after arrival, the tensions that gave way to what would become the Lebanese civil war peaked. Hanna immigrated to the United States with her family in 1972, originally to New York, eventually settling in Springville, Alabama. She played Little League baseball in the wake of the passage of Title IX, becoming one of the first girls to break the gender barrier in sports.

Hanna graduated from the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) with a B.S. in Computer Science. In 2007, she was named Outstanding Alumni by the UAB School of Natural Sciences and Mathematics, and in 2008, she was named UAB Distinguished Alumni of the Year and was the Graduation Commencement speaker [3] speech republished here [4] where she implored graduates to "be the entrepreneurs of their own life" drawing many parallels between the lessons learned from failure by successful Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and a person's life and career.

Career

In 1992 Julie Hanna worked at Lotus Development in Mountain View, Calif., after their acquisition of cc:Mail where she worked on a next generation product strategy as part of the integration of the groupware firm with Lotus Notes. She joined Silicon Graphics to develop the first web-oriented product line for businesses in 1995 and then was recruited the following year with a group of SGI employees to help James Clark build Healtheon, [5] (now WebMD) setting out to build an internet company that would revolutionize healthcare. In 1997 she became the founding VP of Product and Marketing for Portola Communications, developer of the internet's first high performance messaging system. Portola was acquired [6] and she was instrumental in the negotiations to successfully sell the company which would become Netscape Mail. Hanna was founding VP Products and Marketing at onebox.com, [7] founded by Bill Nguyen, acquired for $850 million in 1999 by Phone.com [8] (later part of Openwave). She became an Entrepreneur-in-Residence [9] at the Mayfield Fund venture firm in 2001 and then founded Scalix, [10] an early commercial open source electronic mail and calendaring software company where she served as chief executive until 2004. She has served on the board of directors of Esalen, Mozilla Corporation [11] and Socialtext. [12]

Hanna serves as special advisor to X (formerly Google X), Alphabet's Moonshot Factory and is Venture Partner at Obvious Ventures. She has been an early investor in several high growth technology companies, including Lyft, Lending Club, Bonobos (acquired by Walmart), and Return Path.

Global entrepreneurship and impact

In May 2015, President Barack Obama named Julie Hanna Presidential Ambassador for Global Entrepreneurship [13] “to help develop the next generation of entrepreneurs in the U.S. and abroad.” [14]

Since May 2009 Hanna has served as Executive Chair of the board of directors at Kiva, peer-to-peer micro-lending and crowdfunding pioneer, whose vision is "a financially inclusive world where all people hold the power to improve their lives." Kiva has crowdfunded nearly $1.5 billion dollars reaching 3M micro-entrepreneurs in 80 countries, at a repayment rate of 97 percent. The Kiva crowdfunding platform has attracted a global community of citizen lenders across 190 countries. [15]

In recognition of her vision and global impact on economic and social progress, Hanna was named the United States Woman Icon of APEC and is a recipient of the 2016 Global Empowerment Award. [16]

Hanna served as a member of the World Economic Forum Global Agenda Council on Humanitarian Response. [17]

Writing and speaking

Hanna is a frequent speaker and advocate for global entrepreneurship [18] on purpose-driven profit [19] and the democratizing potential of technology to solve some of humanity's greatest challenges. [20] [21] [22]

Hanna has published a variety of posts as a “LinkedIn Influencer” on LinkedIn. She is co-author, with Reid Hoffman, of "The World's Bank: How Crowdfunding is Disrupting Old Banking", an essay proposing that citizen lending and crowdfunding are transforming traditional banking.

Hanna has been a speaker at TEDx [23] where she spoke candidly about her experience as a war survivor, refugee and immigrant and how this has shaped her life's work and mission to harness the democratizing power of technology in enabling a more just, free and abundant world.

Related Research Articles

A startup or start-up is a company or project undertaken by an entrepreneur to seek, develop, and validate a scalable business model. While entrepreneurship includes all new businesses, including self-employment and businesses that do not intend to go public, startups are new businesses that intend to grow large beyond the solo founder. At the beginning, startups face high uncertainty and have high rates of failure, but a minority of them do go on to become successful and influential.

Funding is the act of providing resources to finance a need, program, or project. While this is usually in the form of money, it can also take the form of effort or time from an organization or company. Generally, this word is used when a firm uses its internal reserves to satisfy its necessity for cash, while the term financing is used when the firm acquires capital from external sources.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Steve Jurvetson</span> American entrepreneur and venture capitalist

Stephen T. Jurvetson is an American billionaire businessman and venture capitalist. Formerly a partner of the firm Draper Fisher Jurvetson (DFJ), he was an early investor in Hotmail, Memphis Meats, Mythic and Nervana Systems. He is currently a board member of SpaceX and served on Tesla's board from 2006–2020, among others. He later co-founded the firm Future Ventures with Maryanna Saenko, who worked with him at DFJ.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Reid Hoffman</span> American internet entrepreneur and author (born 1967)

Reid Garrett Hoffman is an American internet entrepreneur, venture capitalist, podcaster, and author. Hoffman was the co-founder and executive chairman of LinkedIn, a business-oriented social network used primarily for professional networking. He is currently a partner at the venture capital firm Greylock Partners and a co-founder of Inflection AI.

Heidi Roizen is a Silicon Valley executive, venture capitalist, and entrepreneur.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kiva (organization)</span> Micro-loan platform

Kiva Microfunds is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization headquartered in San Francisco, California. Kiva's mission is "to expand financial access to help underserved communities thrive."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ken Howery</span> American entrepreneur & diplomat (born 1975)

Kenneth Alan Howery is an American entrepreneur and diplomat. He is a co-founder of PayPal and Founders Fund. He served as the U.S. Ambassador to Sweden from 2019 to 2021 under President Donald Trump.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Karen Mills</span> US businesswoman and administrator

Karen Gordon Mills is an American businessperson and former government official who served as the 23rd Administrator of the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA). She was nominated by President-elect Barack Obama on December 19, 2008, confirmed unanimously by the Senate on April 2, 2009, and sworn in on April 6, 2009. During her tenure, her office was elevated to the rank of Cabinet-level officer, expanding her power on policy decisions and granting her inclusion in the President's cabinet meetings. On February 11, 2013, she announced her resignation as Administrator and left the post on September 1, 2013.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jessica Jackley</span> American entrepreneur (born 1977)

Jessica Erin Jackley is an American entrepreneur who co-founded Kiva and later ProFounder, two organizations that promote development through microloans.

Stephen Gillett is an American businessman, entrepreneur and technology leader. He is currently the President and chief executive officer at Verily, formerly Google Life Sciences. He was chief executive officer of Chronicle Security, an Alphabet company born out of X, the moonshot factory and founded in 2016. Gillett is also an active adviser at Google Ventures and X.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">PayPal Mafia</span> Term for a group of former PayPal employees

The "PayPal Mafia" is a group of former PayPal employees and founders who have since founded and/or developed additional technology companies such as Tesla, Inc., LinkedIn, Palantir Technologies, SpaceX, Affirm, Slide, Kiva, YouTube, Yelp, and Yammer. Most of the members attended Stanford University or University of Illinois Urbana–Champaign at some point in their studies.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Premal Shah</span> Indian-American entrepreneur

Premal Shah is an Indian-American entrepreneur who co-founded Kiva, a global poverty alleviation non-profit that has raised over $1 billion for low-income entrepreneurs in eighty countries.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Eileen Donahoe</span> American attorney, human rights advocate, and former ambassador

Eileen Chamberlain Donahoe is a former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva, Switzerland, having been appointed by President Barack Obama in 2009. After serving her term as ambassador, Donahoe was appointed as Director of Global Affairs for Human Rights Watch. In 2014, she was also appointed to the board of International Service for Human Rights. She is also an affiliate of Stanford University's Center for International Security and Cooperation, a center of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and Executive Director of the Global Digital Policy Incubator at the Freeman Spogli Institute's Cyber Policy Center working at the intersection of governance, technology and human rights.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nina Vaca</span> American entrepreneur

Nina Vaca is an Ecuadorian-born American entrepreneur. She is the chairperson and CEO of Pinnacle Group, a large provider of information technology and workforce solutions in US and Canada with around 5000 employees, which was named among the Fastest-Growing Women-Owned Business in the United States by the Women Presidents' Organisation in 2018. The story of Nina Vaca and Pinnacle Group opens the Entrepreneur chapter of the McGraw-Hill textbook, "Understanding Business". Vaca was named one of the top 100 CEO’s in STEM publication by STEMconnector.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Shervin Pishevar</span> Iranian-American entrepreneur, venture capitalist, super angel investor, and philanthropist

Shervin Kordary Pishevar is an Iranian-American entrepreneur, venture capitalist, super angel investor, and philanthropist. He is the co-founder and former executive chairman of Hyperloop One and a co-founder and managing director of Sherpa Capital, a venture capital fund which has invested in companies including Airbnb, Uber, GoPuff, Cue Health, Slack, Robinhood, Munchery and Postmates.

Sally R. Osberg an American business executive who formerly served as president and CEO of the Skoll Foundation, where she partnered with founder and chairman, Jeffrey Skoll. She was the founding executive director of the Children's Discovery Museum of San Jose.

Crowdfunding is the practice of funding a project or venture by raising money from a large number of people, typically via the internet. Crowdfunding is a form of crowdsourcing and alternative finance. In 2015, over US$34 billion was raised worldwide by crowdfunding.

Saurabh Srivastava is an Indian entrepreneur, investment professional, institution builder and a former chairman of NASSCOM, a non-profit trade organization for the promotion of Indian IT industry. A master's degree holder from Harvard University, he founded Infinity Venture, reportedly the first venture capital fund in India and is a recipient of Dataquest Lifetime Achievement Award, the IT Industry Award from the Prime Minister of India and Distinguished Alumnus Award from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur. The Government of India awarded him the fourth highest civilian honour of the Padma Shri, in 2016, for his contributions to trade and industry.

Presidential Ambassadors for Global Entrepreneurship (PAGE) was a collaborative advisory group created by former United States President Barack Obama tasked with creating entrepreneurial growth in America.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Global Entrepreneurship Summit</span> International event for entrepreneurship

The Global Entrepreneurship Summit is an annual event organized by the federal government of the United States, in partnership with foreign government hosts. The summit originated from an event organized by the Obama Administration called the Presidential Summit on Entrepreneurship, which was held in April 2010 in Washington, D.C. It brought together entrepreneurs from the United States, Europe, Africa, the Middle East, South Asia, and Southeast Asia to discuss the importance of social and economic entrepreneurship, establish entrepreneurship as an important area of policy focus, and strengthen mutually beneficial relationships between entrepreneurs.

References

  1. ↑ "Board of Directors". Kiva. Retrieved April 28, 2015.
  2. ↑ "Meet President Obama's Entrepreneurship Ambassadors". Wall Street Journal. May 11, 2015. Retrieved May 15, 2015.
  3. ↑ "UAB Celebrates First Green & Gold Commencement May 3 at Bartow Arena". April 23, 2008. Retrieved May 12, 2015.
  4. ↑ "Be the Entrepreneur of Your Life". LinkedIn. Retrieved May 5, 2015.
  5. ↑ Creswell, Julie (February 21, 2000). "What the Heck is Healtheon? Jim Clark set out to build an Internet startup that would revolutionize health care, It took his brainchild, Healtheon/WebMD, four years just to reach infancy. Now even Wall Street thinks it's kinda cute". Fortune Magazine. Retrieved July 1, 2015.
  6. ↑ "Netscape goes on buying spree". CNET. April 30, 1997. Retrieved May 5, 2015.
  7. ↑ "About Onebox / Team". Onebox.com. Archived from the original on October 6, 1999. Retrieved July 1, 2015.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: unfit URL (link)
  8. ↑ "Phone.com buys Onebox.com for $850M". CNET. February 14, 2000. Retrieved May 5, 2015.
  9. ↑ Santiago, William (January 12, 2003). "Executive Life: On the Inside Track in Venture Capital". The New York Times. The New York Times. Retrieved April 27, 2015.
  10. ↑ Lohr, Steve (October 26, 2003). "As Silicon Valley Reboots, the Geeks Take Charge". The New York Times. The New York Times. Retrieved April 27, 2015.
  11. ↑ "Why I'm Joining Mozilla's Board". December 1, 2016.
  12. ↑ "Socialtext Elects 20 Year Technology Veteran Julie Hanna Farris to its Board of Directors". PR Newswire. May 15, 2008. Retrieved July 1, 2015.
  13. ↑ "Presidential Ambassadors for Global Entrepreneurship" . Retrieved May 15, 2015.
  14. ↑ "Obama Plugs Entrepreneurs With Democratic Ties as Cuba Opens". May 11, 2015. Retrieved May 15, 2015.
  15. ↑ "Kiva gets $3M award from Google to reach the 'overlooked' poor with big ideas". Venture Beat. December 12, 2013. Retrieved May 5, 2015.
  16. ↑ "Serial Entrepreneur Julie Hanna wins the Global Empowerment Award 2016 - New Asian Post". www.newasianpost.com.
  17. ↑ "Global Agenda Council on Humanitarian Response 2014-2016". World Economic Forum. Retrieved June 9, 2015.
  18. ↑ MacBride, Elizabeth. "The Egyptian-Born Immigrant Who Fled A War And Became Obama's Entrepreneurship Ambassador". forbes.com.
  19. ↑ Hanna, Julie. "Startups don't need to choose between profit and purpose". wired.co.uk.
  20. ↑ "The Next Billion: A Conversation with Kiva Executive Chair Julie Hanna - Computer History Museum". www.computerhistory.org.
  21. ↑ "Wired Money Speakers". Wired.com. Wired Magazine. Archived from the original on July 7, 2015. Retrieved July 1, 2015.
  22. ↑ "AEO Leadership Forum". Microenterpriseworks.org. Association for Enterprise Opportunity. Retrieved July 1, 2015.
  23. ↑ "Bringing Humanity to Business". TED. Retrieved June 9, 2015.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.