Steve Thomson
Impact: Steve has been one of the most active and instrumental individuals in our community throughout all of 2013. As an advisor on our board, he took charge of putting our community and partner program on an impressive growth trajectory. Steve has brought such tremendous value to our community that we’re bringing him on in a formal role as part of the Mifos Initiative. As of this year, Steve will now be Director, Strategic Projects.
Steve Thomson - Vancouver, Canada
A product manager at heart, Steve is Principal of his own firm, Thomson + Associates, a product and market development consultancy that specializes in helping technology-based start-ups take their innovation to market. Steve has over 17 years of experience in emerging technologies including experience in electronic banking and payments. For the past 10 years, he has worked with start-up technology companies as well as government organizations and NGO’s in the technology start-up space.
Steve has used his experience in the credit union sector to assist with global partner channel development and relationships with large technology vendors as well as strategic product positioning. Steve’s forward-looking vision is helping us to increase the scale and scope of our impact, aiding the mission of creating a world of 3 Billion Maries.
Advice to Community
The Mifos Community is what we make it as individuals and organizations. If we stay aligned with each other as a community, there is no end to the good that we can create with Mifos.
With the release of the Mifos X platform, the Mifos Initiative is undergoing a very fundamental transformation from supporting a vendor-driven open source MIS product to supporting a true community and partner-led platform for financial inclusion. With a growing community, Mifos is well positioned to scale and make a meaningful impact in the lives of millions of people through financial inclusion.
Impact on the Poor
Ensure that all financial institutions servicing the base of the pyramid have access to an affordable platform on which to run their organization.
Contributing to the Community
- Assisted with strategic product positioning and roadmapping
- Assisted with global partner channel development
- Helped to create relationships with large technology vendors
- Now assisting fundraising effort
- Building out the Mifos platform to provide better support for credit cooperatives
- Increasing the market opportunity for partners
- Increasing the global impact of the system’s development