AVGO.ORG

A 29-year-old lawyer is kicking off a new microfinance organization Tuesday that will help others as she herself was helped.

Candace Klein, a lawyer at the venerable Graydon Head & Ritchey law firm downtown, had her law school education paid for by Alice Sparks, a former chairwoman of the Northern Kentucky University Board of Regents.

Sparks made just one request of Klein when she offered the money in 2003: Pay it forward; spend your life helping other women.

Nearly two years after earning her degree, Klein announced an idea March 3 that could help dozens of Cincinnati-area women. Bad Girl Ventures would create a website — badgirlventures.com — and gather the investments of private individuals to collectively finance the earliest stage woman-owned businesses. Combining a contest and a series of educational sessions, women could win loans of as much as $25,000 and plenty of professional help.

Nearly every attendee at a Microfinance USA conference in May in San Francisco came to know Klein.

Her one simple question, addressed to California First Lady Maria Shriver and Matt Flannery, the founder and CEO of Kiva (the world’s largest microfinance institution), in front of a crowd of more than 600, won her recognition.

“Excuse me, Ms. Shriver, I wonder what you and Kiva are doing to partner with other microfinance institutions ... is there an opportunity to partner with us?” she asked, while introducing Bad Girl Ventures.

It was a good thing she spoke up. Klein soon learned she was onto something none of the world’s top peer-to-peer lending organizations had quite figured out.

Kiva, Lending Club, Opportunity Fund and Prosper are international or national in scope, using the Web to match investors with entrepreneurs they’d likely never meet. Klein envisioned a highly localized financing model. The investors would be so intertwined with the entrepreneurs they’d patronize their businesses, become mentors and friends.

“I know how strong my community is when people know each other,” Klein said of Cincinnati.

Her belief: “The more high-touch you are, the better the chances of protecting your investment.”

Shriver was so intrigued that she took Klein to lunch and vowed the relationship would continue.

Three hundred seventy people have contacted Klein since March. Some have joined her advisory board. Some have helped fine-tune her business plan. Others have shared entrepreneurial stories and contacts. Many have made investments. She’s raised $25,000, enough to begin collecting applications. Five women will soon be selected from that pool to participate in the six-week program.