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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 12 months (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 Alternate and the Chair of Put up 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 nonetheless, 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’d keep it up their backs firewood, bananas, a bag of different stuff and a child. I noticed them get abused, overwhelmed and work 24 hours a day,” she stated in an interview. Schooling was her escape –she did properly sufficient to be positioned on the prestigious Valuable Blood Excessive Faculty in Nairobi as a teen and has not appeared again since. As a substitute, she has reached out a hand to assist ladies and ladies that had been similar 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—might be seen as a peek into her future, however earlier than she grew to become the advocate for girls’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 right now’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 girls. In truth, their particular targets had been to arrange a girl serving, lady led financial institution” (KWMB web site). Ten years on nonetheless, KWFT was bleeding cash on the charge of $300,000 a 12 months (GrameenAmerica weblog). Regardless of her lack of expertise within the monetary trade, Jennifer bravely took the helm and relentlessly sought schooling, assist and recommendation from these round her. In an interview with Monetary Occasions, Jennifer confided: “I used to be the mortgage officer; I used to be the accountant; I used to be the auditor; I used to be every part. 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 attaining its mission, offering 900,000 ladies with monetary merchandise equivalent to loans, financial savings and insurance coverage.
Visionary Management
Particularly in instances of disaster, management might 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 concept is that this: “I prefer to work with folks as a result of I consider that I can’t do it alone.” In one other interview, she stated “Folks shouldn’t develop into leaders to allow them to be worshipped by the folks, however in order that they will really serve the folks 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 huge into ladies’s management. We have now obtained to have leaders to run these establishments and we’d like ladies to run them.” However, she admits that even at KWFT, ladies drop out of the race for management on the center administration stage. She worries that ladies don’t need management positions as a result of they’ve so many different priorities, notably of their mid to late 30s when they’re married with their first youngsters. “We’re very acutely aware of this and we attempt to push them up the ladder however it’s not all the time potential.”
In response to this, KWMB has a selected technique of holding management coaching in order that they will establish and develop ladies leaders. In truth, KWMB (then generally 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. However, coaching is only one piece of the puzzle: mentorship is the opposite. “Girls must see that it may be completed,” she stated. “My definition of mentors is individuals who will get ladies to maneuver to the subsequent stage. It isn’t those who say ‘be good and be good,’ no. No matter it takes to maneuver you to the subsequent stage, take it.” She additionally believes that mentorship, like all good marketing strategy, must be structured and completed in ranges. “Mentorship is a gradual course of,” she admits, even perhaps slower for girls being mentored into management roles as a result of they can even be breaking the limitations of tradition and the ladders of custom on the identical time.
Nonetheless, the trail to ladies’s management is evident for Jennifer: with mentorship, assist, publicity and visibility, Jennifer believes, “we could have robust 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 assist ladies, if we need to make a distinction (Grameen America).”
Put up 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 all the time held Jennifer in awe, as I knew that she is an impressive chief with loads of historical past however wrapped round it, is her heat, friendship and the simple smile. This can be a good alternative to find out about her huge achievements. I really like the aplomb with which she carries herself and her fancy head clothes. Jennifer is a fierce advocate of girls empowerment and monetary inclusion however on the identical enjoys speaking in regards to the ear-rings she obtained from India. She is a task mannequin for girls world wide.
– Samit Ghosh, December 11, 2014
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