The audience at Matt Flannery’s talk this past Thursday seemed shocked at how humble the leader of microfinance is. During his talk, Matt gave a run down of the birth of Kiva and the obstacles he faced during its expansion. He was completely transparent about the trouble with potential fraud, explaining that lenders seem to be better at filtering through fake profiles than government regulators could ever be, and about the legal controversy that such an original idea caused, saying that Kiva hires lawyers monitoring any inappropriate activity.

After a series of intriguing audience questions, multiple attendees rushed to the front to meet Matt. Matt, humble as ever, greeted each of them warmly.