From Mortgage Banking to Microfinance: My Journey

Hongqing Chen

Hongqing Chen, a Portfolio/Risk Manager, recently joined Wokai’s Seattle Chapter. Click here to see her profile on Wokai.org!

My ten-year experiment began in 1998, when stepped out of the ivory tower of academia.  I had been teaching Financial Markets and Institutions.  Our guest speakers told such incredible stories from the frontlines of the finance world, which really inspired me and my students.  I decided to leave teaching to pocket war stories, and then move on to something different in 2008.  So at the beginning of 2008, I started to think about the next step in my career.

Have I collected enough war stories!?  Over the past ten years, I have witnessed the collapse of a hot small mortgage banking company due to credit crisis in 1998, the recession of 1999, the burst of internet bubble, the growth and bust of housing bubble, and now, the financial industry’s ongoing meltdown, and the biggest banking failure in the US history (that knocked me and my colleagues out of stability!)

What a coincidence!   Or maybe it is part of grand design by the superior being.  Whatever the reason, as WaMu (my employer) fought to stay alive, I began to think hard about what to do next.  Over lunch in May 2008, my good friend and colleague Rahul Sen stated that he would jump at the opportunity to work for a finance firm focusing on green technology or microfinance. 

A light bulb went on in my head.  That’s it!  I’d found my answer.  I realized that I could devote my energy and knowledge to microfinance without worrying about getting paid or not.

I started brainstorming, networking, and web surfing about microfinance, and came across the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Unitus Equity Fund, the Grameen Foundation, Kiva, and Wokai, as well as Washington CASH and Community Capital and micro finance program at Seattle University.  A whole new world has been unveiled to me!  I look forward to sharing these stories with you. 

Comments

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