Theron Tingstad
Personae | People of Note
Katharine Wolf ’98 with members of
am
her microfinance lending team in Vietn
A Different Return on Investment Katharine Wolf ’98
“I was coming at it from the mindset of an investment banker. That was often to our benefit because we were unrealistically optimistic.”
14 | Quarterly Spring 2013
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f all the animals the Vietnamese villagers could purchase, pigs had a particularly high return on investment. A loan of $60 was enough for two piglets (or one piglet and feed) that, if raised well, could sell at substantial profit a few months later. If borrowers could afford to care for them and build their pens, pigs could be a great investment. Katharine Wolf ’98 easily explains this pig-profit dynamic. But before moving to Vietnam, she knew little about pigs or agriculture or even Southeast Asia. After four years handling leveraged finance and mergers and acquisitions for Deutsche Bank, she did, however, know about returns on investment. And Deutsche Bank’s microcredit fund, which lent to microfinance banks in the developing world, intrigued her. Just out of college and working in finance, Katharine would sometimes ponder how she might make a difference without leaving her field: “I thought, how might I use the financial skills I gained as a banker to improve the world?” The opportunity arose after she transferred with Deutsche Bank to Paris. She met the founder of Entrepreneurs du Monde, a non-governmental organization (NGO), who offered Katharine the chance to help build a lending program in Myanmar or Vietnam. Katharine, sister of Jeffrey Wolf ’98 (and two other quadruplet brothers), has never been one to tiptoe into a project. She plunged in, researching the countries. “I was probably overeager,” she admits. But she also recognizes that her enthusiasm helped her take on government bureaucracy and other barriers that might have frustrated someone more seasoned and jaded.