Asheesh has over 15 years of experience as an entrepreneur, investor, and social innovator. He was the Founder and CEO of CircleLending which pioneered the business of managing peer-to-peer loans between relatives and friends and was acquired by Richard Branson's Virgin Group in 2007. Subsequently, he served as CEO of Virgin Money USA, the American arm of Virgin's consumer financial services business, until June 2009. Asheesh previously worked with the World Bank and the Monitor Group, where he was a strategy consultant and Entrepreneur-in-Residence. He was the Founding Board Chair of Credit Builders Alliance, a non-profit organization that succeeded in enabling major credit bureaus to accept data from small micro-lenders. He has also authored two books on the topic of informal business financing by Nolo Press that have received favorable reviews in the Wall Street Journal and Business Week.
Asheesh is a graduate of the Wharton School and Oxford University, where he was a Commonwealth Scholar. Selected as one of Boston'Asheesh Advani is the founder of CircleLending and Virgin Money USA, and the author of Investors in Your Backyard.s Top 40 Under 40 by the Boston Business Journal, Asheesh actively supports social enterprises and non-profits in the areas of financial security and education.
