Micro-Finance director pursues personal growth on cross-country bike trek.

• Author: Taylor, Mike
• Position: NONPROFIT - Rob Smith - Rocky Mountain MicroFinance Institute

ROB SMITH SAYS HE'S BEEN ON A journey his whole life, and that was never more evident than this past summer, when he embarked a solo cross-countrv bike trip, starting July 1 in Anacordis. Wash., and ending 67 days and 4,264 miles later in Bar Harbor. Maine.

Smith, executive director and co-founder of Rocky Mountain MicroFinance Institute, was awarded a 2012 Bonfil-Stanton Foundation Livingston Fellowship, which each veal, selects five standouts from Colorado's nonprofit sector and grants them $25,000 apiece to enhance their leadership skills. Activities chosen by fellows may include research, travel or executive coaching.

Smith, 43. saw the solo hike trek as an opportunity for sell-reflection on his qualities as a leader and his tole with Rocky Mountain MicroFinance Institute, a nonprofit he co-founded in 2018 that has helped fund and launch 55 businesses in the past three Years through its Business Launch Boot Camp.

"The neat thing about the fellowship program is that its 100 percent self-defined," Smith says. -What's the plan that's going to help von go From success to significance as an individual leader"? That's different for everybody."

Smith figures he camped out in a tent 39 nights of the 67-day journey. "My plan was founded on the notion of turning down the volume and noise in my life to understand ho I would able to move forward," he says.

The trip also provided him with a close-up look at businesses and the economies of small-town USA, from the impoverished Fort Peck Indian Reservation in WolfPoint, Mont., to the downtown revitalization efforts in Port Hope, Mich. Smith chronicled his observations on his blog, positivecollisions.com.

"The secondary objective was, 'Hey, since I'm riding through all these great communities, is there something I can learn and grow from...