#16 Meet our Team — Introducing our new CEO, Will Le
Charting a Bright Future: Welcoming Will Le as impactMarket’s New CEO.
In the ever-evolving journey of impactMarket, we are thrilled to announce a pivotal moment in our growth story. Meet Will Le, our dynamic new CEO, poised to lead impactMarket into an exciting future. Will Le brings an impressive blend of experience and expertise to the helm of impactMarket. With a background that spans investment, entrepreneurship, and project management across the technology, finance, and non-profit sectors, he’s perfectly poised to steer us toward new horizons. As we embark on this transformative chapter, our co-founder and former CEO, Marco Barbosa, assumes the role of President, continuing his invaluable contributions to our mission, vision, and product strategies.
Over the past three years, impactMarket has experienced remarkable growth, scaling from a UBI pilot project in Brazil to a global force for financial inclusion, impacting over 45,000 people from around 250 vulnerable communities in almost 30 countries. Our multi-faceted protocol now encompasses a diverse array of groundbreaking solutions, including Unconditional Basic Income, Microcredit, Learn & Earn, and the Libera crypto wallet.
This transition marks a significant milestone for impactMarket. It builds upon our sturdy foundation to set forth a bold and ambitious vision for the future, one where financial inclusion knows no boundaries.
Nothing better to introduce Will as part of impactMarket than featuring him in our Meet Our Team series. Enjoy it!
On the Spotlight: Will Le
Previously with the Celo Foundation, Will Le played a pivotal role in developing the organization’s go-to-market strategy and forging strategic partnerships. Will started his career at Bain Capital Credit as an investment analyst where he refined his acumen in lending. But what truly sets Will apart is his passion for financial inclusion, a commitment honed through engagements with prominent organizations like the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, GiveDirectly, and IDEO.org. While at GiveDirectly, will served as the country director of Kenya where he supported the launch of one of the largest UBI projects in the world. He thrives on the potential of universal basic income (UBI), emerging technologies, and his love for photography, camping, and discovering the world’s best bakeries while traveling.
What do we need to know about you beyond your bio, Will? Share with us your passions, hobbies, dreams, and some curiosities about you.
My happy place is in the mountains with my camera. I love camping, backpacking, skiing, scuba diving, and anything that brings me closer to nature. I don’t have any kids or pets, but I do have a shocking number of plants.
I’m also a big nerd who enjoys playing chess, watching movie trailers (but rarely the actual movie), trivia nights, and talking about UBI and the societal impacts of technologies like AI. I’m also a terrible singer, a decent dancer, and naturally gifted at hula-hooping. I make a mean grilled cheese sandwich.
Can you tell us about your journey and what drew you to the field of financial inclusion and blockchain technology?
My parents were refugees from the Vietnam War who emigrated to the United States. To this day we still send money back home to support friends and family. This experience has made me fully aware of the privilege I had growing up and the fact that so many talented and hardworking people around the world were not so fortunate.
I believe equitable access to financial services can help level the playing field and give billions the opportunity to create prosperity for themselves and their communities. With blockchain, we have the ability to go further than ever with financial inclusion by removing intermediaries, lowering frictions, and giving more agency to local communities.
What excites you the most about joining impactMarket as the new CEO, and what vision do you have for the organization’s future?
Over the last few years, the impactMarket team has done a tremendous job of building robust communities around the world. I’m looking forward to working with the team to deepen our relationships with these communities by offering value-add financial services such as microcredit, learn-to-earn, and microwork.
I believe impactMarket could become the premier decentralized solution for entrepreneurs to access capital and financial services no matter where they live.
You’ve had experience at organizations like Celo Foundation, Bain Capital, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. How has your background prepared you for this leadership role at impactMarket?
My experiences make me uniquely qualified to lead impactMarket through its next phase of growth. At Bain Capital Credit I learned the fundamentals of lending and credit (I know my way around a loan agreement). As Country Director of GiveDirectly Kenya, I oversaw a team of 150 people, distributed over $30M in cash transfers to the extremely poor, and helped launch one of the largest UBI projects in the world. I was also one of the earliest team members behind Celo. In the five years I’ve spent working on Celo, I’ve deepened my understanding and networks within the blockchain industry and launched pilots in over a dozen countries ranging from humanitarian aid, microwork, and lending. I believe I bring to impactMarket a unique understanding of lending, and blockchain, and the experience of working closely with communities like impactMarket hopes to serve.
One of impactMarket’s core missions is promoting financial inclusion. What initiatives or strategies do you plan to prioritize in achieving this goal, particularly in emerging markets?
I’m really excited about impactMarket’s microcredit business — early pilot results are promising and impactMarket has the infrastructure to scale this product quickly. It’s also very exciting that Opera chose impactMarket’s Learn & Earn product out of numerous options to be the first dApp included in the launch of their MiniPay wallet.
Blockchain and cryptocurrency are constantly evolving. How do you see these technologies shaping the future of financial inclusion, and how will impactMarket contribute to this evolution?
Equitable access to financial services is still a major problem that has not been solved by legacy systems — there are still 1.7 billion unbanked or underbanked people around the world today. Just like technologies like off-grid solar and mobile money leapfrogged incumbents to provide access to last-mile users, I believe blockchain can do the same.
For instance, A few months ago, a friend of mine in Kenya needed some money for an emergency medical procedure. I looked at different options through banks, Paypal, and even some fintech remittance startups but the fastest and cheapest way to send funds was through cUSD with an off-ramp to mPesa.
But blockchain can do more than just lower financial frictions. We now have tools for governance and community engagement that give unprecedented agency to local communities to empower them in their own journeys toward economic development.
As one of the premier protocols for UBI and financial services, impactMarket can serve as the model for how a decentralized and community-driven approach can reach underserved users around the world.
In a rapidly changing landscape, what do you see as the biggest challenges and opportunities for impactMarket and the broader field of financial inclusion?
I recognize I’m joining impactMarket during a tough time for the industry — capital is not as easy to come by. But for the industry to grow we need to focus more on real-world applications that meet the needs of real people all around the world and I can think of few projects that are in as good a position to do that as impactMarket.
With Will Le at the helm, impactMarket is set to embark on an exciting journey that promises to redefine financial inclusion on a global scale. Join us in welcoming him to the team as we collectively chart a brighter, more inclusive future.
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impactMarket (The Human Empowerment Protocol)
impactMarket provides accessible financial solutions to empower underprivileged people all over the world, such as Microcredit, Unconditional Basic Income (UBI), educational content, and the Libera Crypto Wallet. Our inclusive protocol is transparent, reliable, and borderless. It operates as a DAO on top of the Celo network, using $PACT as its governance token while running autonomously through smart contracts.
impactLabs (the company)
impactLabs Lda, based in Portugal, was founded in Nov 2020 by Marco Barbosa, Bernardo Vieira, Afonso Barbosa, and eSolidar. The company is focused on building accessible decentralized systems to unleash human potential and disrupt access to finance while driving DeFi adoption.
