About us
Vittana
We believe in the power of education to change circumstances forever and in its ability to help young people take charge of their lives.
Vittana is a different kind of organization. Our founders, board of directors, staff and supporting organizations are drawn from some of the best technology companies, non-profit organizations and design and law firms in the world. We're drawing upon the best lessons from the business and non-profit worlds to help create lasting change for students around the world. Learn more about our mission and how it all comes together.
Vittana is headquartered in the historic Pioneer Square district of Seattle, WA. As of July 2010, lenders from 30 different countries had funded over $270,000 in loans to students studying everything from accounting to industrial mechanics to tourism. Our fast-growing community has been featured in the New York Times ("College Loans as Development Aid"), Huffington Post ("Ultimate Game-Changer in Philanthropy") and Fast Company ("5 Social Capitalists Who Will Change the World in 2010").
Core team
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Kushal Chakrabarti
Co-Founder and CEO
As the son of first-generation immigrants, Kushal knows first-hand the importance of education and its power to change lives. He owes everything to a few teachers and mentors who believed in him and took a risk on him when he was younger. Previously, Kushal led technical strategy, design and development for the multi-hundred million dollar personalized recommendations system at Amazon.com and, before that, was a research scientist working in artificial intelligence and computational biology. He has authored over 20 patents, talks and peer-reviewed articles over his career.
Kushal graduated from the University of California, Berkeley with a B.S. in computer science and a B.A. in molecular biology. What gets him up every morning is the knowledge that although there's a lot about the world he can't change, he can help make a difference about this.
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Brett Witt
Co-Founder and CTO
Brett has been programming for over 16 years. He has written software for the Chicago public school system, developed mathematical modeling tools at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Most recently, he was a software engineer at Amazon’s Personalization team and, among other things, wrote the latest version of the high-throughput platform systems serving customer purchase, rating and browsing data to tens of millions of Amazon.com visitors every day.
Having grown up in inner-city Chicago, Brett is incredibly passionate about giving other young people the same opportunity to succeed that his Mom and many other teachers worked so hard to provide him. Brett has a B.S. in Computer Science from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.
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Lisa Lindberg
Marketing Director
Lisa is responsible for Vittana's marketing efforts, driving traffic, crafting communications and making sure the world hears about Vittana. Prior to joining Vittana, Lisa has spent the last fifteen years working in product management and marketing at internet companies like Amazon.com and RealNetworks. Previous to joining Vittana, she was the General Manager for Rhapsody, a leading digital music service, where she oversaw product management, marketing and retention efforts.
She has a passion for all things high tech, is addicted to gadgets, and never turns down a good latte.
Ms. Lindberg received a Bachelor of Arts degree in English from the University of Washington. Her parents instilled in her the value of a good education and hard work, and that lesson has paid off. Now, she is proud to be part of the Vittana team, and working to bring others some of the same opportunities she has had.
In her free time. Lisa enjoys sailing in the San Juan Islands, reading mysteries, and spending time with her family.
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Nick Cain
Partnerships Manager
Nick has a background in microfinance and a passion for creating access to higher education throughout the world. At Vittana, he is responsible for managing and building partnerships between Vittana and its partner microfinance institutions (MFIs). Before coming to Vittana, Nick served as a Kiva Fellow, focusing on training and capacity building at three (MFIs) across Paraguay and Bolivia. Prior to his time in Latin America, Nick worked in Rwanda, providing student services and program development for Orphans of Rwanda, a non-profit college scholarship organization serving young people affected by Rwanda’s 1994 genocide. Nick holds a B.A. in American Studies from Columbia University, where he was constantly challenged to confront and grapple with some of the world's most entrenched problems—he is proud to be working with the Vittana community to change the way students around the world access college.
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Lindsey Maxfield
Communities Manager
Lindsey spends her days with the community at Vittana that has grown around providing access to higher education through microfinance, coordinates with lenders to make sure everything works properly, and keeps the office running smoothly. She has previously worked with organizations like World Vision and Seattle Works doing community outreach, and traveled abroad to South Africa in 2007 where she saw first-hand how important access to education is to grow human potential. Ever since, she has been dedicated to helping others access the same opportunities she has been given. Lindsey has a B.A. in International Affairs from the George Washington University, a semi-obsessive tendency to quantify her life with to-do lists and an enduring passion for education instilled by her teacher parents.
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Matthew Godfrey
Intern
Matt is a Brigham Young University advertising student from British Columbia, Canada. He found his niche in social entrepreneurship by putting his talents in marketing and advertising to good use solving social and environmental issues.
Matt was one of the original members of Students for Social Entrepreneurship at BYU and designed the club’s logo and marketing materials. In just over a year, SSE placed more than 100 students in on- and off-campus internships with over a dozen social ventures. In 2010, Matt led Vittana’s BYU internship team and then joined Vittana’s office in Seattle for spring and summer as a marketing intern.
Fellows
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Nayna Gupta
Nayna is excited to support Vittana's work and mission and is thrilled to have her first hands-on experience with microfinance. Nayna has a passion for working to ensure all young people have access to higher education and believes that higher education is a universal human right. In addition to working for two years at a civil rights law firm, Nayna has created and led youth and community development projects in Chicago and Washington, DC, where she was the recipient of Mayor Adrian Fenty's Community Service Award.
Nayna will serve as a Vittana Fellow for three months in Lima, Peru, after which she will begin law school at Stanford University.
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Adam Lenhardt
Adam is looking to apply his business skills and passion for helping people in microfinance. He believes that everyone has a right for education and wants to facilitate that right by working with Vittana to ensure people are given an opportunity. He is serving as a Vittana Fellow for two months in Asuncion, Paraguay. Adam has been traveling in Latin America since January.
Adam worked for large business organizations for 10 years in various Finance, Accounting, and Project Management roles. Most recently he worked at JPMorgan Chase as a Senior Finance Manager and he also assisted with the Washington Mutual integration in various roles. He also worked for General Electric in their Financial Management Program. He has a B.S. degree in Finance and Accounting from the University of Dayton.
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Jordan Webster
Jordan is excited to be part of the Vittana team and thrilled to jump into Nicaraguan life and the world of microfinance. In San Francisco she is a middle school teacher, a classical musician and a master's student in international education at University of San Francisco. Her interests include educating for social change, critical pedagogy and access to education, especially for women. She loves to travel, explore, camp, hike, bike and generally be outdoors.
Jordan will spend 7 weeks in Managua, Nicaragua this summer.
Board of directors
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Geoff Davis
Geoff is an entrepreneur turned social entrepreneur. He currently helps social entrepreneurs create systemic change on a global scale. He is a triathlete, the father of 3 wonderful girls and the husband of 1 beautiful wife.
From 2001 – 2008 Geoff was CEO of the microfinance accelerator Unitus, which he guided from start-up to a global leader in microfinance. He is also the co-founder of the Unitus Equity Fund, the first commercial venture capital fund focused on microfinance. Earlier in his career he founded a microfinance program in Mexico, was part of the start-up team at Grameen Foundation and launched Grameen Investments, a microfinance investment fund. Before his conversion to a social entrepreneur, he founded and sold a translation agency, founded a commodities trading company, co-founded a dot.com and was part of a start-up biomedical engineering company. He has spoken world-wide on microfinance, entrepreneurship and social entrepreneurship. He has been a member of the boards or investment committees of Kiva.org, SKS Microfinance, Swadhaar Financial Services, Bandhan, Pro Mujer Mexico, Dignity Fund, and Unitus Equity Fund.
Geoff has been named a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum, Entrepreneur of The Year by Ernst & Young, an Entrepreneurial Thought Leader by Stanford University, and one of Seattle’s “40 under 40” by the Puget Sound Business Journal. He earned degrees from Brigham Young and Harvard universities.
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Kim Rachmeler
Kim is an active angel investor in Seattle-area startups. Kim most recently spent 10 years at Amazon.com in various senior executive roles including CIO International, Vice President of Worldwide Customer Service, Vice President of Global Supply Chain, Vice President of Personalization, and Vice President of Worldwide Discovery. During her time at Amazon.com, Kim and her teams launched nine new business categories, four new countries, countless website features, and acquired three companies. Being a technologist at heart, Kim also spent five years early in her career as a software engineer at Hewlett Packard and five years at Silicon Graphics. It was from the ashes of a failed startup that she landed at Amazon.com. Kim has a B.S. and an M.S. in Electrical Engineering from Stanford.
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Kushal Chakrabarti, co-founder and CEO, also serves on the Board of Directors.