Teresa Eugenia Prada González leads by instance, tirelessly forging forward on her longtime mission to “spend money on girls, and remodel lives.” Having based Colombia’s Fundación delamujer in 1986, she serves as chief government and drives the group’s constant deal with offering monetary companies to low-income girls and different marginalized teams. A pioneer within the early days of economic inclusion for girls, Teresa stays a robust voice within the trade, championing shopper safety and gender fairness at each the shopper and institutional ranges.
Teresa was born and raised in Bucaramanga, the park-filled capital of the division of Santander in Colombia’s northern mountains. She studied economics and enterprise administration on the Universidad Industrial de Santander. However whereas she credit her coursework as the idea for her expertise in finance and administration, she says she discovered much more from hands-on expertise.
Although she knew that beginning a microfinance establishment meant taking over an excessive amount of accountability, Teresa recollects that she was by no means afraid; somewhat, she was excited by the “infinite prospects” she noticed forward. Her religion within the venture remained robust regardless of the numerous challenges. Working with a handful of workers in a humble workplace, Fundación delamujer initially couldn’t pay salaries to its workers; at the moment microcredit was nonetheless a largely untested concept that appeared dangerous to banks and traders. Few, if any, statistics existed in regards to the casual financial system and the enterprise case for microfinance in Colombia, however Teresa knew there was a big market demand for small-scale monetary companies. With Fundación delamujer’s rising mortgage portfolio as proof, she finally secured seed capital for the group and progressively invested in its infrastructure and progress.
At present, Fundación delamujer serves over 354,000 purchasers, 68 p.c of whom are girls, and operates 258 branches throughout Colombia. The group affords 16 totally different credit score merchandise focusing on each city and rural purchasers, in addition to a number of insurance coverage merchandise and monetary training trainings. As president, Teresa continues to drive Fundación delamujer’s mission to foster financial and social improvement, primarily amongst low-income girls, although her day-to-day precedence is to deal with the purchasers and workers on the core of the group’s work. “These individuals imagine in our establishment, are invested in our establishment,” says Teresa, and he or she feels strongly that the worth of their contributions needs to be mirrored in the best way the group treats these key stakeholders. Fundación delamujer workers can take part in a profession monitor program designed to develop inside expertise, and Teresa’s top-down emphasis on worker happiness and well-being additional promotes retention.
In contemplating current modifications within the microfinance trade, Teresa factors to shopper safety as probably the most urgent problem dealing with the sector in the present day. As microfinance establishments have grown, she says, many have overlooked their unique objective of serving low-income purchasers: institutional progress overshadows purchasers’ greatest pursuits, and up-market shifts towards earnings go away behind the poorest populations. In gentle of those tendencies, Teresa’s private mission is to advertise rules of justice for microfinance purchasers, utilizing her personal group’s operations to steer by instance. In June 2014 Fundación delamujer accomplished a rigorous course of to obtain the Sensible Marketing campaign’s shopper safety certification.
Having spent the previous three many years as a feminine chief, each inside Fundación delamujer and within the bigger subject of economic inclusion for girls, Teresa additionally strives to advertise the “tremendous vital” objective of gender fairness. Along with designing monetary companies that meet the precise wants of its majority girls clientele, Fundación delamujer prioritizes equal alternative in hiring and promotions practices: a minimum of 50 p.c of its workers and managers should be girls. By making gender parity a key efficiency indicator for the establishment, Teresa hopes to encourage a working surroundings that permits feminine and male professionals to comprehend their goals.
When requested what recommendation she would supply to younger girls searching for to start out a profession in monetary inclusion, Teresa urged them to be goal-oriented: “determine what you’d like to realize in life and pursue the independence and competence that may allow you to succeed in these objectives. You will need to search happiness, and that comes from dedicating your self to work you imagine in and discovering a significant life.” From her early days as a pioneer of economic inclusion for girls in Colombia, to her continued management as President of Fundación delamujer, Teresa demonstrates simply how huge an impression such devoted tenacity can have.
Cross-posted from Ujjivan as a part of their on-going collection on girls leaders in monetary inclusion
