ELIZABETH FUNK
President & CEO, Dignity Fund
Elizabeth Funk is actively involved in supporting rapid growth and commercialization in the microfinance industry. In addition to serving on the board of Unitus, Elizabeth is also a co-founder and serves on the Board of the Unitus Investment Group.
Elizabeth is the founder and CEO of the Dignity Fund, an investment vehicle designed to attract investment dollars to finance growth in microfinance. She serves on the board of Unitus’s first equity investment, Ujjivan, and serves on the Board of Directors of Deutsche Bank’s Global Microfinance Consortium Fund. She is a co-founder and serves on the board of the Silicon Valley Microfinance Network, and was the founding chairman of the board of MicroPlace, an internet-based microfinance investment platform sold in 2006 to eBay.
Elizabeth is a co-owner and the chairman of the board of Imperial Parking, a parking services business based in Hong Kong. She also owns a land development and ecological preservation project in Belize. Until 2007 Elizabeth served as the CEO of CML Global Capital, a diversified international investment firm, which was publicly traded until she helped privatize the firm in 2004.
Prior to joining CML, Elizabeth was one of the earliest employees of Yahoo!, where she founded the Yahoo! Shopping service. She formulated Yahoo!’s initial shopping and commerce strategy, and helped grow that business to comprise a major source of Yahoo!’s revenues and customer usage. She also oversaw business development for Yahoo! Finance, Classifieds, Small Business, Yellow Pages, Auctions, Mail and Search. Elizabeth spent 4 years at Microsoft, where she served as a product manager for Microsoft Word and as one of the early members of the Microsoft Office team.
Elizabeth is an active member of the Young President’s Organization (“YPO”) serving as the chair of the board of the Pacific Region and as a founder of Social Enterprise Networks, an initiative that brings together members on projects that “make a difference” in the world. Elizabeth serves on the board of the Glide Economic Development Corporation, building housing developments for the homeless and working poor in downtown San Francisco. She is also a member of the Clinton Global Initiative.
In 2008, Elizabeth was recognized as the Female Entrepreneur of the Year by The Indus Entrepreneurs (TiE), recognizing her work for Unitus that has "pushed the boundaries of innovation, quality and overall creativity."
Elizabeth holds an undergraduate degree with honors in international relations and economics from Stanford University, and an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School, where she graduated in 1996 as a Baker Scholar. She is a frequent speaker about microfinance to audiences such as at the US Department of State, the Forbes CEO Conference, and the Clinton Global Initiative. She has been profiled in publications including Forbes, the San Jose Mercury News, and Business Week. Elizabeth is married, has two children, and lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.
