Jessica Jackley has found balance

Jessica Jackley, the founder of the microfinance lending website Kiva, works in a home office she shares with her novelist husband Reza Aslan. The wooden walls are covered with her three children's art, two of whom accompanied Ms. Jackley to her presentation at Poly earlier this month. This merging of work and family reminds me of Jackley's business model: not the product of a self-proclaimed entrepreneur nor of a finance major, Kiva denies the coldness of economics.

In economics class this year, we've discussed the way the market suffers from its own stereotypes, as do many of the entrepreneurs Kiva reaches. The market, contrary to what I believe about the oil industry, big pharma, mass production (the list goes on), is not immoral; it is simply amoral. Economics do not have a conscience. Yet the borrowers and lenders of Kiva do. Microlending and microfinance are not a philanthropic endeavor nor are they charity. Kiva's services are entirely economical, a transaction, which avoids the hierarchy of charity but maintains a supportive heart.

Like Jackley, Kiva maintains a balance between personal and professional. Neither faction of her life is weighed or valued; instead it's all combined. Her business practice is modeled based on her family values, her parenting is influenced by her entrepreneurship, and her role as mother and wife informs her professional life. I struggle with the idea of someday "doing it all" (parenting, working, living), but Jackley is not compromising by separating and measuring out work and play. Everything is everything.