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After four years working in youth ministry, Katie Nienow moved to the Congo to work in microfinance. Her boss was not happy. "You're leaving the one thing God has best designed you to do," he told the Richmond, Virginia, native.

But it seems he was wrong. Nienow remembers sitting in her first economics class at the University of Virginia: "I remember suddenly feeling like I had found the subject my brain was made to learn and to know." In the Congo, Nienow worked for HOPE International, offering financial services to people who are often excluded from the formal banking sector.

Nienow is now doing something similar in Mountain View, California, in Silicon Valley. At Juntos Finanzas, a tech startup that she cofounded, Nienow says, "I'm able to engage in the restorative work that God cares about . . . building business as it ought to be, as a channel for the common good."

Business as God Meant It to Be

Why Katie Nienow left youth ministry out of a love for economic justice.

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Stan Wiedeman

August 16, 2013  9:53pm

Kudos to Katie for recognizing the Spirit's work in her life in spite of the noise coming from many Christians who don't understand that mission is omnicultural.

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The Camp Whisperer

August 16, 2013  12:22pm

A great reminder that ministry can take many forms, and ethical business practice is certainly one of those forms.

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