Academic Background

My name is Joyce Meng, and I am a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University (Balliol College), reading for a masters degree in Financial Economics. In June 2009, I completed with distinction the MSc in Economics for Development, receiving the Arthur Lewis Prize for Excellence in Development Economics and the George Webb Medley Prize for Best Overall Performance (Proxime Accesit). In May 2008, I graduated summa cum laude from the Huntsman Program in International Studies and Business at the University of Pennsylvania, with degrees in Finance and International Studies and minors in Mathematics and Spanish. I currently live in Nothern Virginia.

View Joyce's Resume (December 2009)

Public Sector and Research Experiences

I am deeply interested in microfinance and international development, with particular focus on social entrepreneurship and private financial sector development. Two summers ago, I had the chance to pursue microfinance field work in Mexico with FINCA International, where I witnessed the potential power of microfinance. We conducted surveys of 800 microcredit clients across all of Mexico, asking women in rural villages about their lives, their families, their expenditures, and their businesses. Although microfinance is now widely accepted as a tool for promoting grassroots development, it remains an imperfect instrument given high interest rates, dependency on the individual entrepreneur to make his or her business work, and limited impact on the poorest of the poor, who are often tempted to consume (rather than invest) their loan, or lack skills to start or grow their business. In my research with Fundación Nantik Lum in Spain, I investigated these issues in depth, contributing to the publication of a research monograph "Microcredit in Spain”, as well as helping the Foundation's Chiapas business collectives transform into a full group-solidarity lending microcredit fund. More recently, in 2008, I worked at the World Bank as a research assistant in the Finance and Private Sector Development Group, where I investigated various drivers of international capital raisings.

To practically apply potential solutions, I co-founded YouthBank (www.youth-bank.org), a microbusiness incubator for street youth in Lagos. YouthBank operates a community center in Lagos, providing young people on-the-job business training followed by a small, asset-based microcredit loan upon successful program completion. The goal of YouthBank is to address the roots of poverty, and provide a means for sustainable self-employment. Unlike traditional microfinance institutions, we provide substantial business training and mentorship to build trust relations and business skills so that we can reduce the financial risk of working with such a troubled demographic. Currently, I act as the CFO – we’ve raised a substantial amount of funding and support through local partnerships.

I am also the CEO and founder of Givology (www.givology.org), an online giving marketplace for education. At Givology, we believe education is the single most important and sustainable resource for empowerment, advancement, and poverty alleviation. Through the Internet, we connect individual donors to students and communities in need of education support. We partner with highly esteemed grassroots non-profit organizations and schools providing education grants and infrastructure projects to students and villages throughout the world. What truly distinguishes Givology is our philosophy of building lasting sponsor-student relationships and leveraging small dollar donations to make a difference. Donors not only have a chance to track the impact of their contribution, but can also read quarterly updates about the progress of the student and project, as well as blog about their experiences and "message" the student or project. Our aim is to make giving easy, transparent, and rewarding, with the premise that philanthropy ought to be an engaging community activity, rather than the passive act of cutting a check.

Private Sector Experiences

Since the intersection of business and development is my passion, I’ve had a variety of international business experiences to gain exposure to the logic and workings of capital markets. In 2006, I interned as a summer analyst at Credit Suisse in Debt Capital Markets in Hong Kong, where I witnessed the immense power of international capital markets in facilitating economic development and driving sustainable growth. In 2005, I was an intern at Taishin International Bank in Taipei, Taiwan, - the second largest domestic bank – where I provided support and consulting for business development initiatives aiming to emulate US best practices. In 2007, I worked as a summer analyst in Leveraged Finance at Goldman Sachs on Wall Street, where I built leveraged buy-out and project finance models for deals in the energy space (an opportunity to witness the height of the financial bubble and subsequent crash!). In 2008, I was a summer analyst in the autos and health care groups of a large credit hedge fund in Boston. Through my work, I was able to cover distressed companies, learning a lot about our current economic crisis and the challenges financing our financial sector. Most recently, I returned to Goldman Sachs to work in a multi-billion dollar long-short equity fund. For me investing is fasinating because it involves so many different layers of analysis and creativity in finding opportunities within the market.

Having seen both formal and informal financial sectors, I want to aid in the process of banking reform, rural credit extension, and private sector development in emerging markets, especially in Latin America and Asia.