Joel Umali has more than nine years experience in development work with a passion for information and communications technology for development. He has worked with the USAID’s Last Mile Initiative Programme to set-up community telecentres in rural, remote and unserved areas in the Philippines.

Joel has written and co-authored various ICT4D research papers on e-governance, telecentres, and m-banking and performed liaison work for the World Bank on mobile-banking.

Joel wants to be remembered as social entrepreneur, someone who is able to recognize a social need and apply entrepreneurial principles to achieve social and economic change.