Alex Counts is President and CEO of Grameen Foundation, a dynamic Washington D.C.-based nonprofit organization focusing on enabling the poor, and especially the poorest, to create a world without poverty, utilizing the tools of microfinance and technology.  GF has grown to a global network of microfinance and technology partners in more than 25 countries. Counts became Grameen Foundation's first chief executive in 1997, after ten years of working in microfinance and poverty reduction, including six years living and working in Bangladesh.  A 1988 Cornell University graduate, with a degree in economics, Counts' commitment to poverty eradication deepened as a 1988-9 Fulbright scholar in Bangladesh, where he witnessed dire poverty as well as the innovative solutions that had been developed and applied on a wide scale by the Grameen Bank and other members of the Grameen family of companies. He trained under and worked closely with Dr. Muhammad Yunus, the founder and managing director of the Grameen Bank, and the co-recipient of the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize. Counts has propelled Grameen Foundation's philosophy and approach through his writings on poverty and microcredit for the poor.  His latest work, Small Loans, Big Dreams: How Nobel Prize Winner Muhammad Yunus and Microfinance Are Changing the World, was published by John Wiley & Sons in April 2008.  He is also the author of Give Us Credit: How Muhammad Yunus' Microlending Revolution is Empowering Women from Bangladesh to Chicago, which was published by Random House in 1996. With a newly established regional office in Hong Kong he will be sharing his insights on challenges as well as opportunities in China and the Asia region. 

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