Acumen Fund is currently seeking highly qualified applicants for the position of Executive Assistant to the CEO.

Location: New York, NY

Organization: Acumen Fund is a global non-profit venture capital fund serving the four billion people living on less than $4 a day. Its objective is to create a blueprint for building financially sustainable and scalable organizations that deliver affordable, critical goods and services that elevate the lives of the poor. Acumen Fund invests debt and equity in enterprises delivering critical goods and services to the poor in South Asia and East Africa.

Position description: The Executive Assistant will serve as point person for the Chief Executive Officer, with primary responsibility for all aspects of supporting the CEO through strategic relationship management and communications. This will include the handling of all scheduling, domestic and international travel logistics, meeting preparation, meeting follow up, and internal meeting representation. In addition, the Executive Assistant will be responsible for managing a substantial portion of the CEO’s inbound and outbound communication, often serving as a key liaison for communication with the global staff, Board of Directors, Advisory Council, Acumen Fund Partners, and other members of the Acumen Fund community.

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A new paper posted in our resources section gives a specific regional example of the potential benefits of biofuels for the BoP (this adds to our previous discussions on the subject here, here and here).

The paper - by Kathleen Robbins of the GreenMicrofinance Group - tells the story of a small NGO, aided by GreenMicrofinance and an enlightened multinational company, that is piloting an environmentally sound and economically sustainable approach to biofuels. The key element is a jatropha nursery that is incubating young plants and teaching a group of Haitian farmers how to grow them.

The oil squeezed from the plant will be burned in lamps and cookstoves and the remaining seedcake used as fertilizer. As supplies grow, a small refinery will be built to process the plant oil into biodiesel-and the local mobile company is willing to buy it to fuel the diesel generators on their cell towers.

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