ACCION Welcomes New Board Chair and Members

Microfinance Organization Names Diana Taylor to Board Chairmanship

BOSTON, June 29 /PRNewswire/ -- ACCION(R) International, a pioneer and leader
in microfinance, today announced that it has elected four new members to its
board of directors and has appointed Ms. Diana Taylor as its new chair,
effective June 19, 2009.

Ms. Taylor brings extensive expertise in banking and finance to her role as
ACCION board chair. Currently a managing director at Wolfensohn & Co., a New
York-based investment banking firm, she has also served as superintendent of
banks for the State of New York, from 2003 to 2007. Between 1996 and 2003 she
held various positions in the New York state government, including CFO of the
Long Island Power Authority and deputy secretary to the governor for housing
and finance. Prior to her government work, Ms. Taylor was an investment
banker at Smith Barney, Lehman Brothers and Donaldson Lufkin & Jenrette.

Ms. Taylor sits on the boards of Allianz Global Investors, Brookfield
Properties, FNMA, and Sotheby's. She also sits on several not-for-profit
boards, including the Hudson River Park Trust, which she chairs, and Dartmouth
College, the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University, the New
York Women's Foundation, and the International Women's Health Coalition. She
chairs a Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation commission focused on
financially underserved communities, and is a member of the Council on Foreign
Relations.

Diana is succeeding Alvaro Rodriguez Arregui as ACCION board chair, who will
remain an active member of the board.

"Serving as chair has been a privilege and an enormously enriching personal
experience," said Mr. Rodriguez. "However, the demands of my other commitments
at this time made me decide to step down, while looking forward to continuing
to be involved on the board."

"I am profoundly honored to help direct an organization with so much history,
so many 'firsts' in microfinance and poverty alleviation, and such a promising
future," said Ms. Taylor. She added, "I'm enormously grateful to Alvaro for
his contributions and fierce dedication to ACCION, and we thank him deeply for
his outstanding work as board chair."

ACCION also welcomes the following new members to the board: Nancy Birdsall,
president, Center for Global Development; Ricardo Hausmann, director, Harvard
Center for International Development and professor of the Practice of Economic
Development, Kennedy School of Government; Barbara Lucus, former partner and
chairperson, Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft; and Roy Sosa, chairman, MPOWER
Ventures and CEO, MPOWER Labs. Gustavo Herrero, executive director of the
Latin America Research Center at Harvard Business School and a long-time
ACCION board member, will take over as ACCION's vice-chair.

About ACCION
ACCION International is a private, nonprofit organization with the mission of
giving people the financial tools they need -- microenterprise loans, business
training and other financial services -- to work their way out of poverty. A
world pioneer in microfinance, ACCION was founded in 1961 and issued its first
microloan in 1973 in Brazil. ACCION's partner microfinance institutions today
are providing loans as low as $100 to poor men and women entrepreneurs in 23
countries in Latin America, Asia, Africa and the United States. In the last
decade alone, ACCION partners have disbursed more than 28.5 million loans
totaling $23.4 billion; 97 percent of the loans have been repaid. Selected
for the fifth consecutive year for its pioneering approaches to poverty
alleviation, ACCION was among 45 organizations awarded the 2008 Social
Capitalist Award by Fast Company Magazine/Monitor Group. ACCION has also been
awarded Charity Navigator's highest rating -- four stars -- for efficiency and
sound fiscal management, for the second consecutive year. For more
information, visit www.accion.org.
ACCION(R) is a registered trademark of ACCION International.
SOURCE ACCION International

Bruce MacDonald, SVP, Communications of ACCION International, +1-617-625-7080,
Ext. 1245, bmacdonald@accion.org