Elizabeth Israel
Co-Founder and Principal

Elizabeth Israel co-founded GreenMicrofinance, LLC in 2002. As Principal and CEO, she oversees a team of highly dedicated individuals who are passionately committed to pursuing their mission of poverty alleviation and environmental sustainability. GreenMicrofinance merges microfinance and the environment.

For thirty-one years Elizabeth has worked in community-based economic development. For 7 years, she lived in rural communities with her family while serving in the Commonwealth of Dominica and in Nepal under the United Methodist Church. She began her career with Trickle Up (TUP), forming one of the first TUP groups in 1979, called The Banana Bunch, a peer group agribusiness. After returning from Nepal, she joined the US-based Working Capital. As New Hampshire State Director of Working Capital, she was able to take the Working Capital peer group lending concept, completely unproven in the United States, and make it a national model for domestic rural development. [This program evolved into Microcredit-NH]. Her leadership assisted Working Capital to become the foremost U.S. microfinance institution, which received the First Presidential Award in Microenterprise Development for Innovation from President Bill Clinton at the White House in 1997.

Returning to international development, she served as Washington Director of Christian Children's Fund (now ChildFund), overseeing the formation and development of CCF MEDI--Microenterprise Development Initiative. She was a consultant for ADRA International and World Relief. He work brought her to Thailand, India, Philippines, Senegal, Cote d’Ivoire, Uganda, Kenya, Angola, and Guatemala.

During her many years living among the very poor, Elizabeth experienced daily the impacts deforestation, smoke-filled kitchens, impure water, scarcity of water and food supplies, lack of clean energy, sustainable housing, inadequate roads, and the economic effect these conditions had on the lives of the poor. From these experiences emerged the seeds for GreenMicrofinance.

She has a MS in International Community Economic Development from Southern New Hampshire University, and a MS in Management from Antioch University New England. She enjoys camping and numerous outdoor activities with her family, including 8 grandchildren.

Thomas B. Israel
Co-Founder and Principal

Thomas Israel is a founding Partner of GreenMicrofinance, LLC in association with his wife, Elizabeth Israel. He serves as President of Green Microfinance, LLC (GMf™). Since retiring in 2002 from an interesting and creative real estate career spanning forty-five years, he has devoted significant effort toward the success of the Green Microfinance Companies. His business experience is enhanced by high creative imagination, and strong analytical, communication, and inter-personal skills.

He commenced his business career in Richmond, Virginia. As a licensed Virginia Real Estate Broker, he acquired over 40 years of experience in real estate, primarily as a commercial real property broker and analyst. After fifteen years, Thomas became a Corporate Officer and the Director of Real Estate Development for a Virginia firm, a position he held for ten years. His responsibilities included all corporate real estate, finance, and construction oversight functions for the company. Subsequently, as a Florida Certified Appraiser, his fifteen years of professional valuation experience encompassed a broad sweep of commercial real property analyses, the valuation of complex properties, and scopious feasibility analyses.

He has a BA Degree in Fine Arts from The College of William and Mary in Virginia, and has completed over 80 academic credit hours of post-graduate studies. Through the American Institute of Real Estate Appraisers, Israel completed some twenty courses and seminars including, among them: Capitalization Theory, Income Property Appraising, Environmental Issues, Factory-built Housing, Regression Analysis, and Real Estate Risk Analysis. Thomas is a trained hospice care counselor. He is licensed by The Elijah House as a Pastoral Prayer Counselor. A Eucharistic lay minister, Thomas sits on the Board of Barnabas Ministries, Lynchburg, VA., whose mission is education of and outreach to the poor, primarily in the Philippines and in Africa.