Board of Directors

Geoff was the founding CEO of microfinance accelerator Unitus, which he guided from startup to global leader in microfinance. He co-founded the Unitus Equity Fund, the first commercial microfinance venture fund.

Previously, Geoff co-founded a microfinance program in Mexico, was part of the startup team at Grameen Foundation and Grameen Investments. Before becoming a social entrepreneur, Geoff founded and sold a number of companies, including a translation agency, a commodities trading company and a biomedical engineering companies.

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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Sebastien de Halleux was the COO and Co-Founder of Playfish, one of the largest and fastest growing social game companies which disrupted the video game industry by changing how millions of people play together. Playfish was acquired by video game giant Electronic Arts in November of 2009.

Prior to starting Playfish, Sebastien helped launch another startup, Macrospace, an early pioneer in mobile games (now Glu Mobile, which IPOed in 2007) and worked at other companies including Nokia and Booz Allen Hamilton.

Sebastien is an active angel investor and is involved in several non-profit projects which harness bright minds and technology to change the world for good. Sebastien holds a master's degree in Civil Engineering from Imperial College and was a recipient of the 2010 TechFellow Award. He has resided in Brussels, Bangkok and London, and presently lives in San Francisco.

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Ash Lilani is a managing partner at Saama Capital and has more than 19 years of venture capital investing and financial services experience. Lilani is managing director of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) Financial Group's India-focused funds, and sits on investment committees for the China-focused funds and holding company investments. Lilani is also responsible for the strategic direction and the management of the company's operations and pursuits in India. In his previous role, he developed and led all of the company's global activities, including the operation of its offices in London, Tel Aviv, Bangalore, Mumbai, Beijing and Shanghai. Prior to taking on SVB’s globalization efforts, Lilani served as senior vice president and manager of Silicon Valley Bank’s South Bay region, where he was responsible for commercial banking activity in the area.

Lilani is a charter member of TiE - The Indus Entrepreneurs, co-founder and former board member of Global India Venture Capital Association, and an active advisor to the American India Foundation.

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Kim was Vice President of Worldwide Customer Service, Global Supply Chain, and Worldwide Discovery at Amazon. During her time at Amazon, 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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Craig Tall is the retired Vice Chair of Corporate Development for Washington Mutual, Inc. As a member of the company's executive committee from 1990-2004, his management responsibilities at Washington Mutual involved acquisitions, its commercial banking group, its consumer finance company, its life insurance company, and many corporate functions - including strategic planning, real estate, special credits and its venture capital investment arm. Before joining Washington Mutual, Craig was the President of Compensation Programs, Inc., a national employee benefits consulting firm. He received his bachelor's degree in economics from the Wharton School of Finance at the University of Pennsylvania, and did graduate studies in corporate finance and marketing at the University of California, Berkeley. He is a graduate of Seattle's Lakeside School.

Craig was a founder of the Seattle Academy of Arts and Sciences (SAAS), served as president of the SAAS Board of Trustees, and was recently elected as a lifetime trustee. He has previously served as board chair of the Washington chapter of the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society of America, and the American Heart Association. Additionally, he has served as a former board member of the Pacific Northwest Ballet, the Make A Wish Foundation, and the American Cancer Society. He currently serves on the boards of TrueBlue, Inc. (NYSE: TBI), Cascadia Capital Corporation, and the Space Needle Corporation.

Craig is the Managing Director of CET Capital Partners, LLC, a financial services consultancy providing assistance and expertise on mergers and acquisitions, financings, and deal structurings.

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Brett has been programming for over 16 years. He has written software for Chicago's public school system, developed mathematical modeling tools at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, and was a software engineer on Amazon’s Personalization team. Brett co-founded Vittana and built the first versions of the Vittana.org website.

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 now works as a Senior Software Engineer at OPower. Brett has a B.S. in Computer Science from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.

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Kushal is the founder and co-board chair of Vittana. Previously, Kushal ran technology for a $1 billion team at Amazon and is the author of 20+ patents and papers. Kushal was recently named as one of Seattle’s Top 40 People Under 40 and voted the #1 Game-Changer in Philanthropy by 1.7 million readers on Huffington Post. He is a frequent speaker on youth poverty, education and social entrepreneurship, including at SOCAP, Pop!Tech and TEDxBrussels. In his free time, he races triathlons, takes pictures and works with dogs. Kushal lives in Seattle with his 1-year-old German Shepherd puppy.

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