Claremont Creek Ventures: Claremont Creek Ventures is a venture capital firm investing in early-stage information technology companies. Our investment professionals are experienced managers and proven venture investors. Our team shares a deep commitment to helping entrepreneurs build successful companies from the ground up. We focus on IT sectors where we have deep domain expertise, including – but not limited to – mobility, healthcare, and security markets.
http://www.claremontvc.com

Her current efforts include financial innovation for the unbanked both in the United States and in developing countries and encouraging technological innovation on behalf of humanitarian needs. In 2004, she was recognized by Women’s eNews as one of their ‘21 Leaders for the 21st Century’ for her efforts in increasing access to capital for women entrepreneurs and was named as one of WITI’s Women to Watch in 2003.

Indigo Financiera: Indigo is a radical proposal to develop a micro-private equity fund whose source of capital comes from profits generated by a remittances service business targeted toward the US Mexican diaspora. Inspired by Working Assets, the remittances service provides a sustainable business model that allows the Indigo fund to invest in SMEs and take more risks in this underserved market.
http://www.indigofinanciera.com/

Dave McClure has worked in the high-tech industry for over fifteen years. Dave is actively engaged in promoting microfinance awareness and involvement through the Silicon Valley Microfinance Network. He is also a member of the Full Circle Fund, a San Francisco-based non-profit formed by SF Bay Area entrepreneurs addressing local issues in affordable housing, education, and technology access.

After graduating from Johns Hopkins University in 1988, Dave worked as a programmer and database consultant for several Silicon Valley companies, including Intel and Microsoft. In 1994, Dave started Aslan Computing, an Internet and e-commerce consulting firm, which was later acquired by Servinet / Panurgy in 1998. Dave has also helped develop and bring to market a variety of Internet and e-commerce businesses and continues to be an active advisor and angel investor in several new startups including Feedster, HealthUnity and WellFund. From 2001 to 2004, Dave was director of marketing for PayPal Developer Network program. In January 2005, Dave joined SimplyHired.com as their director of marketing. SimplyHired.com is a “vertical search” startup which runs the world’s largest search engine for jobs. SimplyHired was named by Time Magazine as one the Top 50 Coolest Web sites for 2005. Dave is also founder and co-chair for the SDForum Search SIG, a technology user group covering emerging topics in the internet search industry.

Unitus: Unitus is a global microfinance accelerator that acts as a social venture capital investor for the microfinance industry. Unitus identifies the highest-potential microfinance institutions (MFIs) in developing countries and helps accelerate their growth through capital investments and capacity-building consulting, thus empowering them to help exponentially more poor people worldwide. In doing so, Unitus aims to demonstrate that MFIs can be run as profitable, large-scale, poverty-focused businesses with links to local capital markets. As of March 2006, Unitus had eight MFI Partners worldwide serving more than 540,000 poor clients. Based in Redmond, Wash., USA, and with an office in Bangalore, India, Unitus relies on innovative financial instruments and the financial resources of like-minded individuals and foundations to fulfill its mission. Unitus received the 2006 Fast Company / Monitor Group Social Capitalist Award for taking an innovative, entrepreneurial, business-minded approach to alleviating global poverty.
http://www.unitus.com

PayQuik: PayQuik provides infrastructure and services to financial institutions, money transfer agent networks and others engaged in the global cross-border money transfer industry. PayQuik has developed an industry standard platform to provide transaction processing in a manner fully compliant with Patriot Act and Bank Secrecy Act regulations in the USA and with regulatory environments in several countries worldwide. The Company offers a proven, turnkey, end-to-end, fully compliant, outsourced money transfer solution as an alternative to building and maintaining an in-house platform. The solution provides full compliance and fraud/risk management modules, other money transfer processing infrastructure and fully integrated back-end customer service and technical support at a fraction of the cost it an organization would incur to develop a comparable system internally. The Company offers a “shared network” in which participating customers can elect to utilize the money transfer originating and receiving locations of other PayQuik customers. This creates a “network effect” and provides customers with greatly expanded geographic coverage and multi-channel global origination and delivery capabilities. This shared network offers potential entrants the first viable opportunity to compete realistically with the current closed system market leaders. The PayQuik
platform is expected to be deployed in over 70 countries by year end 2006. http://www.PayQuik.com

Before founding Progress Financial, Gabriel was Senior Vice President, National Hispanic Segment Executive at Bank of America in Charlotte, NC. He was responsible for developing and overseeing the execution of the company’s Hispanic marketing, sales and retention strategies across all the consumer product groups, which included Deposits (checking and savings), Card Services (credit and debit), e-Commerce, Remittances, Insurance, and Consumer Real Estate. As overall segment leader he also drove national Hispanic employee hiring strategies across the 6,000+ retail branch network, as well as product development, service and fulfillment, and other initiatives that impacted the bank’s Hispanic consumer market acquisition. He was directly responsible for setting and overseeing the bank’s Hispanic consumer account sales and retention goals, with over $30m in annual marketing investing, as well as additional ongoing related technology and research spending. Hispanic customer acquisition at Bank of America grew 5-fold during Gabriel’s tenure as segment leader.

Gabriel was also actively involved with the Bank’s efforts at promoting financial services access to all sectors of the population. He testified before the U.S. Congress on behalf of the Bank on the subject of helping bring financial services to the unbanked and underserved communities.

Before joining Bank of America in early 2003, he was founding managing director for RedLatino, Inc., a Hispanic-focused subsidiary of Redf, one of the largest marketing services and marketing strategy firms in the southeastern United States. There, he helped financial services clients develop and execute key Hispanic marketing strategies for checking, debit cards, money remittances and mortgages.

In 1995 Gabriel founded and managed Cendant’s Latin American operations, which he subsequently sold to a marketing firm in Mexico City. Gabriel began his career in the early 1990s as a consultant for McKinsey & Company, Inc., serving clients in Mexico and India.

Gabriel is a Board Member of Club Arca, a CA-based successful venture targeting the Hispanic consumer in the US with a value-added membership program.
Gabriel received a master’s degree in business administration from the Stanford Graduate School of Business and a bachelor’s degree in business from Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México (ITAM) in Mexico City. He was a founding member and president of ITAM Association of Collegiate Entrepreneurs as well as president of the Mexico City chapter of the Stanford MBA alumni association.

He enjoys Southeast Asian cooking, traveling, snow skiing, water skiing and scuba diving.

Mama Mikes is an online service that enables immigrants in Europe or the United States to send gift vouchers for a variety of practical and thoughtful items to their families and friends in Kenya and Uganda. Vouchers can be purchased for groceries, bedding, and airtime (phone minutes) for mobile phones. Before MamaMikes, an immigrant had only one option: visit a money transfer service, transfer the money (less the service charge) to their relative, and hope that this relative will use these funds for practical purchases. With MamaMikes, the immigrant is able to send the funds directly to a designated vendor to ensure that the purchase is made in accordance with their wishes.
http://www.mamamikes.com

Daniel Ayala is Senior Vice President and Product Management Manager of Wells Fargo’s Global Remittance Services division.He is responsible for developing, executing, and managing the bank’s global consumer remittance product strategy. His team is primarily focused on the development of consumer remittance products for Latin America and Asia. Danny and his team manage the InterCuenta Express, Dinero al Instante products focused on consumer remittances to India, the Philippines, Mexico, Guatemala, and El Salvador.

Daniel is a global payments systems expert with over 14 years of experience. Previously, he has been responsible for product management, marketing, and sales management activities for Citibank, BankOne, and Bank of America.

He graduated from DePaul University in Chicago, Illinois with a Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science and received his MBA from Nova Southeastern University in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Ayala is also a Certified Cash Manager (CCM) with the Association for Financial Professionals. In the past, he has lived in Bogota - Colombia, Caracas - Venezuela, Chicago - Illinois, and Miami - Florida. He and his family currently live in the San Francisco Bay Area in California.

Wells Fargo: Wells Fargo is a diversified financial services company with $422 billion in assets, providing banking, insurance, investments, mortgage and consumer finance to more than 23 million customers from more than 6,000 stores and the internet across North America and elsewhere internationally. Wells Fargo Bank, N.A. is the only “Aaa”- rated bank in the United States.
http://www.wellsfargo.com