Ashe, Jeffrey

JEFFREY ASHE is the manager of community finance at Oxfam America. Prior to coming to Oxfam, Mr. Ashe founded and served as executive director of Working Capital, the largest microenterprise  program in the United States. Before Working Capital, Mr. Ashe was director of the “PISCES Project,” the first worldwide investigation of programs reaching the smallest economic activities of the poor. He also served as senior associate director at ACCION International where he assisted in the dissemination of peer group lending throughout Latin America. Mr. Ashe designed, assisted, and evaluated microenterprise programs in thirty-five countries in Asia, Africa, Latin America and Eastern Europe for the World Bank, the Agency for International Development, CIDA, ODA, and many NGO clients. In addition, he developed microenterprise projects in Arkansas, North Dakota, and Canada. Before his work in the microenterprise field, Mr. Ashe directed a nation-wide rapid rural appraisal for the Costa Rican government and served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Ecuador. Mr. Ashe has published extensively in the microenterprise field and is the author of several books and articles on the topic. He also teaches microfinance at Brandeis and Columbia Universities. He holds a BA in Political Science from the University of California, Berkeley, and an MA in Sociology from Boston University. (REV. 2006)