A pacesetter by instance: Teresa Eugenia Prada González

Teresa Eugenia Prada González leads by instance, tirelessly forging forward on her longtime mission to “put money into girls, and rework lives.” Having based Colombia’s Fundación delamujer in 1986, she serves as chief government and drives the group’s constant concentrate on offering monetary providers to low-income girls and different marginalized teams. A pioneer within the early days of economic inclusion for girls, Teresa stays a powerful voice within the trade, championing consumer safety and gender fairness at each the consumer 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 premise for her abilities in finance and administration, she says she realized much more from hands-on expertise.

As a younger skilled, Teresa labored within the finance division of a program designed to relocate casual avenue distributors right into a everlasting business middle. Right here she witnessed the persistent difficulties such micro-entrepreneurs confronted in accessing the credit score wanted to develop their companies. Across the similar time, Teresa realized of the work of Margarita Guzmán and Fundación WWB Colombia, a women-focused microfinance establishment based in Cali in 1980. Impressed by their work and having noticed firsthand that the present monetary system excluded the nation’s low-income majority, she determined to use her “unstoppable power” to the duty of providing credit score to Colombia’s marginalized populations. Thus was born Fundación delamujer in 1987 whose first loans enabled market distributors to develop their companies by means of incremental price financial savings by buying wares in bigger portions.

Although she knew that beginning a microfinance establishment meant taking over a substantial amount of duty, Teresa remembers that she was by no means afraid; fairly, she was excited by the “infinite potentialities” she noticed forward. Her religion within the mission remained robust regardless of the numerous challenges. Working with a handful of staff 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 buyers. Few, if any, statistics existed concerning 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 providers. With Fundación delamujer’s rising mortgage portfolio as proof, she finally secured seed capital for the group and progressively invested in its infrastructure and development.

Right this moment, Fundación delamujer serves over 354,000 shoppers, 68 % of whom are girls, and operates 258 branches throughout Colombia. The group provides 16 totally different credit score merchandise concentrating on each city and rural shoppers, in addition to a number of insurance coverage merchandise and monetary schooling 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 concentrate on the shoppers and workers on the core of the group’s work. “These folks imagine in our establishment, are invested in our establishment,” says Teresa, and she or he feels strongly that the worth of their contributions ought 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 inner 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 consumer safety as essentially the most urgent problem going through the sector at the moment. As microfinance establishments have grown, she says, many have overpassed their unique goal of serving low-income shoppers: institutional development overshadows shoppers’ greatest pursuits, and up-market shifts towards income go away behind the poorest populations. In gentle of those traits, Teresa’s private mission is to advertise rules of justice for microfinance shoppers, utilizing her personal group’s operations to guide by instance. In June 2014 Fundación delamujer accomplished a rigorous course of to obtain the Good Marketing campaign’s consumer safety certification.

Having spent the previous three a long time 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” aim of gender fairness. Along with designing monetary providers that meet the particular wants of its majority girls clientele, Fundación delamujer prioritizes equal alternative in hiring and promotions practices: not less than 50 % of its workers and managers have to be girls. By making gender parity a key efficiency indicator for the establishment, Teresa hopes to encourage a working setting that permits feminine and male professionals to understand their desires.

When requested what recommendation she would provide to younger girls looking for to start out a profession in monetary inclusion, Teresa urged them to be goal-oriented: “determine what you’d like to attain in life and pursue the independence and competence that may allow you to succeed in these targets. 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 influence such devoted tenacity can have.

Cross-posted from Ujjivan as a part of their on-going collection on girls leaders in monetary inclusion