Premal Shah is President of Kiva.org and is a leading social entrepreneur.

In 2009, he was selected to Fortune Magazine's 40 Under 40 List

40 under 40 (Fortune Magazine)

Fortune Magazine's 40 under 40 List details the young stars in business across the globe.Mark Zuckerberg topped the 2011 list. Facebook now has over 800 million users.-External links:***...

 and was named as a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum

World Economic Forum

The World Economic Forum is a Swiss non-profit foundation, based in Cologny, Geneva, best known for its annual meeting in Davos, a mountain resort in Graubünden, in the eastern Alps region of Switzerland....

.

Prior to Kiva, Premal joined PayPal early on and spent 6 years at the company. He is considered to be a part of the PayPal Mafia

PayPal Mafia

"PayPal Mafia" is an informal term for the community of American businesspeople and investors centered in Silicon Valley, who were founders or early employees of e-commerce service PayPal before founding a series of other technology companies...

, a group of PayPal alumni who have gone on to found or co-found other successful companies, including YouTube

YouTube

YouTube is a video-sharing website, created by three former PayPal employees in February 2005, on which users can upload, view and share videos....

, LinkedIn

LinkedIn

LinkedIn is a business-related social networking site. Founded in December 2002 and launched in May 2003, it is mainly used for professional networking. , LinkedIn reports more than 120 million registered users in more than 200 countries and territories. The site is available in English, French,...

, Tesla Motors

Tesla Motors

Tesla Motors, Inc. is a Silicon Valley-based company that designs, manufactures and sells electric cars and electric vehicle powertrain components. It was the only automaker building and selling a zero-emission sports car, the Tesla Roadster, in serial production...

 and Yelp

Yelp

Yelp, Inc. is a company that operates yelp.com, a social networking, user review, and local search web site. Yelp.com has more than 54 million monthly unique visitors as of late 2010.- History :...

.

Premal has spoken widely on applying Silicon Valley breakthroughs to global poverty.

Additional facts

• In 1991 and 1992 was a participant in the National Youth Leadership Training program from "National Youth Leadership Council
  National Youth Leadership Council
  The National Youth Leadership Council, or NYLC, is a national nonprofit organization located in Saint Paul, Minnesota that promotes service-learning in schools and communities across the United States. Founded in 1983 by Dr. James Kielsmeier, NYLC is the host of the annual National Service-Learning...
  
  " in St. Paul, Minnesota.
• Featured speaker at the 2006 Clinton Global Initiative.
• Premal Shah is also a spokesperson for BlackBerry
  BlackBerry
  BlackBerry is a line of mobile email and smartphone devices developed and designed by Canadian company Research In Motion since 1999.BlackBerry devices are smartphones, designed to function as personal digital assistants, portable media players, internet browsers, gaming devices, and much more...
  
   and was featured widely in advertisements.
• He also carried the Olympic Torch for the 2008 Summer Games.