Few ladies within the microfinance world are as recognizable as Jennifer Riria. She is the CEO of Kenya Girls Holding, twice-voted Ernst & Younger Entrepreneur of the Yr (East Africa and Kenya respectively in 2013 and 2014) and a Ford Basis “Champion of Democracy.” She was first feminine Board Member of the Nairobi Inventory Change and the Chair of Submit Workplace Financial savings Financial institution for 4 years. She can be the chair of Girls’s World Banking’s Board of Trustees. This stage of success nevertheless, extra so for a lady in a patriarchal society like Kenya, was not straightforward.
Rising up in a poor family in rural Kenya, Jennifer witnessed firsthand the abuse ladies acquired by the hands of society: “I watched my mom and different ladies within the village function as donkeys. They might keep on their backs firewood, bananas, a bag of different stuff and a child. I noticed them get abused, crushed and work 24 hours a day,” she stated in an interview. Training was her escape –she did effectively sufficient to be positioned on the prestigious Valuable Blood Excessive College in Nairobi as an adolescent and has not appeared again since. As a substitute, she has reached out a hand to assist ladies and ladies that had been identical to her as soon as.
After Jennifer graduated from College of Dar es Salaam in Tanzania, she pursued further research within the UK on the College of Leeds. Upon finishing that, Jennifer returned to Kenya to finish her PhD at Kenyatta College. Her thesis subject—ladies, schooling and improvement—may be seen as a peek into her future, however earlier than she grew to become the advocate for ladies’s financial empowerment, Jennifer taught on the college for ten years. It was solely after a stint within the United Nations that she took a full step into the world that now holds her in such excessive esteem.
In 1991, Kenya Girls Finance Belief (KWFT), the precursor to at present’s Kenya Girls Microfinance Financial institution (KWMB), a subsidiary of Kenya Girls Holding, was in a troubled state. Based in 1981 beneath the auspices of Mary Okello, KWFT was “arrange (as) a monetary Establishment dedicated to addressing solely monetary wants of ladies. In truth, their particular targets had been to arrange a girl serving, girl led financial institution” (KWMB web site). Ten years on nevertheless, KWFT was bleeding cash on the price of $300,000 a yr (GrameenAmerica weblog). Regardless of her lack of expertise within the monetary trade, Jennifer bravely took the helm and relentlessly sought schooling, help and recommendation from these round her. In an interview with Monetary InstancesJennifer confided: “I used to be the mortgage officer; I used to be the accountant; I used to be the auditor; I used to be all the things. However I knew what poverty means; I knew what starvation means; I knew these ladies.” This fearless dive into the unknown paid off. A few years later, KWFT emerged as a mannequin microfinance establishment, one that’s dead-on in reaching its mission, offering 900,000 ladies with monetary merchandise reminiscent of loans, financial savings and insurance coverage.
Visionary Management
Particularly in instances of disaster, management may be the deciding think about whether or not an organization or perhaps a trigger, can survive. However opposite to the imaginative and prescient of a frontrunner as a single particular person, rallying their followers from on excessive, Jennifer’s thought is that this: “I prefer to work with individuals as a result of I imagine that I can’t do it alone.” In one other interviewshe stated “Folks mustn’t grow to be leaders to allow them to be worshipped by the individuals, however in order that they’ll actually serve the individuals with dedication and with sincerity.”
Girls’s Management
When requested about her place as chief in an trade dominated by males, Jennifer’s place is evident: “I’m large into ladies’s management. We now have obtained to have leaders to run these establishments and we want ladies to run them.” Nonetheless, she admits that even at KWFT, ladies drop out of the race for management on the center administration stage. She worries that girls don’t need management positions as a result of they’ve so many different priorities, significantly of their mid to late 30s when they’re married with their first kids. “We’re very acutely aware of this and we attempt to push them up the ladder however it isn’t at all times doable.”
In response to this, KWMB has a selected technique of holding management coaching in order that they’ll determine and develop ladies leaders. In truth, KWMB (then often known as KWFT) gained the primary Girls’s World Banking Excellence in Management Award launched in 2011. The award acknowledges the “role-model” establishment within the community that exemplifies each excellence in ladies management and excellence in efficiency. Nonetheless, coaching is only one piece of the puzzle: mentorship is the opposite. “Girls must see that it may be executed,” she stated. “My definition of mentors is individuals who will get ladies to maneuver to the following stage. It’s not those who say ‘be good and be good,’ no. No matter it takes to maneuver you to the following stage, take it.” She additionally believes that mentorship, like several good marketing strategy, needs to be structured and executed in ranges. “Mentorship is a gradual course of,” she admits, maybe even slower for ladies being mentored into management roles as a result of they may even be breaking the boundaries of tradition and the ladders of custom on the similar time.
Nonetheless, the trail to ladies’s management is evident for Jennifer: with mentorship, help, publicity and visibility, Jennifer believes, “we may have sturdy ladies leaders.”
With a lot achieved in her life, what has stored the indefatigable Jennifer Riria going? Easy. It’s the perception that “the girl is the core. She holds us up. It’s important to help ladies, if we need to make a distinction (Grameen America).”
Submit Script from Ujjivan CEO, Samit Ghosh
I’ve the good honor of being a member of the Board of Trustees of Girls’s World Banking chaired by Jennifer. I’ve at all times held Jennifer in awe, as I knew that she is an excellent chief with numerous historical past however wrapped round it, is her heat, friendship and the straightforward smile. This can be a good alternative to find out about her monumental achievements. I like the aplomb with which she carries herself and her fancy head clothes. Jennifer is a fierce advocate of ladies empowerment and monetary inclusion however on the similar enjoys speaking concerning the ear-rings she obtained from India. She is a job mannequin for ladies world wide.
– Samit Ghosh, December 11, 2014
