The MacArthur Foundation has named José A. Quiñonez a 2016 MacArthur Fellow. Quiñonez, who earned a Master of Public Affairs (MPA) degree in 1998 from Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, is one of 23 fellows named to the foundation’s class this year.
Quiñonez joins the following Wilson School MPA alumni who also have been named MacArthur Fellows: Taylor Branch MPA '70, Martin Eakes MPA/JD '80 and Jon Rapping MPA '92. Quiñonez also received the Bullard Award from Students and Alumni of Color in April 2016, and is a 1994 alum of the Wilson School's Junior Summer Institute.
A financial entrepreneur, Quiñonez helps low-income, immigrant and minority families develop their full economic potential by creating pathways to mainstream financial services and non-predatory credit. He currently serves as CEO of the Mission Asset Fund (MAF), which he founded in 2007. Based in San Francisco, MAF aims to create a fair financial marketplace for hardworking families.
By offering financial training classes to the community, MAF learned that many individuals were pooling their resources and distributing loans to one another in an informal arrangement called a lending circle. Quiñonez created a mechanism to formalize the lending circle practice and report individuals’ repayment of small, zero-interest loans to credit bureaus and other financial institutions. Participants began to establish a credit history and gain access to credit cards, bank loans and other financial services.
To bring this approach to as many people as possible, Quiñonez established a network of partnerships that has resulted in 53 nonprofit providers in 17 states and Washington, D.C., using the model in their communities.
The MacArthur Fellows Program awards people rather than projects, investing in their potential, and enables them to pursue their own creative pursuits for the benefit of society at large. The fellowships carry no requirements and provide recipients with stipends of $625,000. The foundation selects its fellows through three criteria: “exceptional creativity, promise for important future advances based on a track record of significant accomplishment and potential for the fellowship to facilitate subsequent creative work.”