officially incorporated, registering in the Netherlands as Stichting (Foundation) to Promote Women's World Banking, an international nonprofit organization with the objective of providing women entrepreneurs with the capital and information necessary to access the money economy of their own countries and build viable businesses. In 1991, Nancy Barry took over from Michaela Walsh to become Women's World Banking's second president. Barry led the expansion of the Women's World Banking network to include major banks, recognizing their potential to be innovative in bringing financial services to poor populations. During Barry's tenure, the Women's World Banking network grew to reach nearly 20 million low-income entrepreneurs. Women's World Banking's current president and CEO, Mary Ellen Iskenderian, took over leadership in 2006. The global team, headquartered in New York City, consists of approximately 40 experts in microfinance representing more than 15 nationalities. Women's World Banking is governed by a Board of Trustees, made up of representatives from the sectors of banking, finance, business, law, and community organizing. “Friends of WWB/USA, Inc.” is a 501(c) (3) tax-exempt organization which raises donations from U.S. foundations, corporations and individuals in support of Women's World Banking's global mission, and maintains a separate Board of Directors made up of U.S.-based leaders in law, finance and academia. At the Clinton Global Initiative Annual Meeting in September 2009, President Barack Obama recalled his mother working at Women's World Banking, where “She championed the cause of women's welfare and helped pioneer the micro loans that have helped lift millions out of poverty." The President's mother, Ann Dunham-Soetoro, was Women's World Banking's policy coordinator in the mid-1990s, and her work was pivotal in informing the policy platform of the United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing in 1995. Focus on women The earliest MFIs were largely gender neutral: they sought to offer credit to low-income entrepreneurs who lacked assets to pledge as collateral and as such were deprived of access to capital by the formal banking sector – an obstacle that still affects women in disproportionate numbers today. Research began to reveal that granting women microloans had an enduring, more profound impact on the broader well-being of the population. Access to credit gave women not just more control over household assets, but also more autonomy and decision-making power and greater participation in public life. Empowering women economically had a multiplier effect as well. Evidence showed that poor women reinvested much more