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Jon Bishop wanted to be a biologist since he was nine years old — he spent his graduate years studying bees in the Alaskan backcountry, training to understand ecosystems well enough to protect them. Then he lived for a stretch in rural Panama, and watched farmers clear rainforest they didn't want to clear, just to grow enough corn to feed their families. That contradiction — protect the land, or feed your family became the question that eventually pulled him out of ecology and into finance.
Today, Bishop is the founder and CEO of Envest Microfinance, a Madison-based fund that has spent twenty years lending capital into some of the smallest, hardest-to-fund microfinance institutions in the world — first across Latin America, and now in East Africa. His model leans on something most funds avoid: trusting local loan officers to make the calls he says he isn't equipped to make from thousands of miles away.
