Evanna Hu

Chief Executive Director

Evanna is currently pursuing a major in Political Science and a minor in Romance Language and Literature at the University of Chicago. She is also taking courses at the Booth School of Business. Before UChicago, she attended the Ohio State University through the Post-Secondary Program and took classes in Political Science, French, and Economic Public Policy. She became involved in microfinance in high school when she attended the World Food Prize Conference. Her passion for microfinance took off from there. Meeting and talking with Muhammad Yunus was one of the most defining moments and opened her eyes to the power of microfinance and social entrepreneurship and how they have the ability to alleviate the effects of poverty. At UChicago, Evanna realized that there was a gap of knowledge of the impacts and developments of microfinance and founded this organization to fill that void. She hopes that this organization can spread awareness of microfinance and, at the same time, play a role in the future development of microfinance as it merges with Wall Street.

An avid believer in the social sector, Evanna started her first non-profit venture as a sophomore in high school in order to provide immediate relief to the victims of the Darfur Genocide in Sudan. She led the effort to march against the Omar Al-Bashir regime and raised more than $10,000 for the victims. In college, she has continued her social entrepreneurial spirit and was a 2011 Global Kairos Fellow. She is also an employee of Academy of Urban School Leadership, a non-profit that turns around chronically-failing Chicago Public Schools and trains the next generation of urban teachers. In her spare time, she community organizes on the Southside in her capacity as Co-chair of the Health Disparities Coalition and tinkers with new social innovation ideas.

Her hobbies include training for triathlons, tennis, cooking, and music. She also blogs at evannahu.wordpress.com

Email her at: evannahu@uchicago.edu