Stanley Ann Dunham graduated (class of 1960) from Mercer Island Island High School. She would go on to enroll her college education at the University of Washington and the University of Hawaii. After she earned her Bachelor’s Degree in 1967, she moved to Jakarta where she began field work and eventually earned a Master’s Degree.
While working for the Ford Foundation in rural villages in Indonesia, Dr. Dunham immersed herself in the local culture and learned about metal smithing and textile crafts. She then developed a microfinance model to help turn traditional craft industries into sustainable businesses that could support artisans—especially women and their families.
Later, Dr. Dunham worked in Pakistan for the Agricultural Development Bank on some of the first microcredit projects for poor women and artisans. She returned to Indonesia to continue her microfinance work as a consultant for Bank Rakyat. These microloan programs are still used today by the government of Indonesia.
In 1992, Dr. Dunham received her doctorate in anthropology. That same year, she moved to New York to work for the Women’s World Banking (WWB) as its policy coordinator, where her work was pivotal in forming the policy platform of the United Nations’ Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing in 1995. Today the WWB is the largest global network of microfinance institutions and banks in terms of number of clients, and the only one that explicitly designates poor women as the focus of its mission.
As a pioneering anthropologist and a lifelong supporter of women’s rights, Dr. Dunham worked to improve the economies of rural communities around the world. Dr. Dunham became a leader in the field of global development. Through her research and immersion in the daily life of rural people in other countries and cultures, she championed new ways of providing financial support—through credit programs and microfinancing—to help rural communities and artisans build sustainable businesses.