The Presidential Ambassador for Global Entrepreneurship initiative, launched by President Obama in 2014, is a collaboration between American entrepreneurs, the White House, the U.S. Department of Commerce and several other federal agencies. The initiative was born out of President Obama’s insight that the way we celebrate and support entrepreneurship in the U.S. is one of the most unique things for which we are known. The hope is that we can export entrepreneurship to places that need to be uplifted economically, which can lead to peace building. And it’s almost impossible to have peace without economic stability first, according to Julie Hanna, executive chair of the board at Kiva.org.

In 2015, Hanna was named as a Presidential Ambassador for Global Entrepreneurs. “It’s been a wonderful honor to export my own entrepreneurial journey and that of Silicon Valley to other parts of the country, to other parts of the world,” said Hanna. Her signature initiative, Global Capital Access, is committed to delivering $100 million in crowdfunded Kiva loans to 200,000 women and young entrepreneurs across 86 countries, including the U.S.

Hanna recently joined Lisa Martin (@Luccazara), host of theCUBE*, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile live streaming studio, at the CloudNOW – 5th Annual “Top 10 Women in Cloud” Innovation Awards, held in Mountain View, CA. (*Disclosure below) CloudNOW is a non-profit consortium of leading women in cloud computing and converging technologies.

Hanna and Martin discussed what inspired Hanna to be an entrepreneur, as well as what draws women to technology.

Technology as a way to solve global problems

As someone who was born in Egypt during a time of war, Hanna has found inspiration from peacemakers such as Nelson Mandela and Mahatma Gandhi. She hopes that alliances between technology and business can unite us with our humanity, leading to greater economic stability and harmony among nations.

“In many ways, [the people who influenced me] were people I read about, at a distance, who were thinking about big, global problems, and who were innovating their way to solve them,” said Hanna.

Hanna said that she thinks what draws women to technology is connecting the dots with technology to do meaningful things, rather than tech for its own sake. She said that she finds CloudNOW’s work and mission to be vitally important and inspiring, because, to paraphrase Maya Angelou, we model ourselves after the heroes and sheroes that we honor.

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE and theCUBE’s coverage of the CloudNOW – 5th Annual “Top 10 Women in Cloud” Innovation Awards. (*Disclosure: Some segments on SiliconANGLE Media’s theCUBE are sponsored. However, no sponsorships have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo by SiliconANGLE