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Growing up in a poor family in rural Kenya, Jennifer witnessed firsthand the societal mistreatment of girls: “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 properly sufficient to be positioned on the prestigious Valuable Blood Excessive Faculty in Nairobi as a young person and has by no means regarded again. As an alternative, she has reached out a hand to assist ladies and women who have 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. Then Jennifer returned to Kenya to finish her PhD at Kenyatta College. Her thesis matter—ladies, training and growth—could be seen as a peek into her future, however earlier than she grew to become an 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 Ladies Finance Belief (KWFT), the precursor to in the present day’s Kenya Ladies Microfinance Financial institution (KWMB), a subsidiary of Kenya Ladies Holding, was in a troubled state. Based in 1981 underneath the auspices of Mary Okelo, the primary African lady supervisor at Barclays Financial institution in Kenya, KWFT was set as much as handle the monetary wants of girls as a girl serving, lady led financial institution. Ten years on nevertheless, KWFT was bleeding cash on the price of $300,000 a yr. Regardless of her lack of expertise within the monetary business, Jennifer bravely took the helm and sought training, assist and recommendation from these round her. In an interview with Monetary Instances, 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 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 attaining its mission, offering 900,000 ladies with monetary merchandise resembling loans, financial savings and insurance coverage.
Particularly in occasions of disaster, management could be the deciding think about whether or not an organization, or a trigger, can survive. However opposite to the imaginative and prescient of a pacesetter as a single particular person rallying followers from on excessive, Jennifer’s thought is that this: “I prefer to work with folks as a result of I consider that I can’t do it alone.” Jennifer additionally believes that “Folks shouldn’t change into leaders to allow them to be worshipped by the folks, however in order that they will actually serve the folks with dedication and with sincerity.”
With regards to her place as chief in an business dominated by males, Jennifer’s place is obvious: “I’m huge into ladies’s management. We now have obtained to have leaders to run these establishments and we want ladies to run them.” However, she admits that even at KWFT, ladies usually 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, notably of their mid to late 30s when many are married with their first kids. “We’re very aware of this and we attempt to push them up the ladder, however it’s not at all times doable.”
“…the girl is the core. She holds us up. It’s important to assist ladies, if we wish to make a distinction.”
In response to this, KWMB conducts management coaching to establish and develop ladies leaders. In actual fact, KWMB (then referred to as KWFT) received the primary Ladies’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. “Ladies must see that it may be finished,” 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 every good marketing strategy, must be structured and finished in ranges. “Mentorship is a sluggish course of,” she admits, even perhaps slower for girls being mentored into management roles as a result of they are going to be breaking the limitations of tradition and the ladders of custom on the identical time.
Nonetheless, the trail to ladies’s management is obvious for Jennifer: With mentorship, assist, publicity and visibility “we may have sturdy ladies leaders,” she says.
With a lot achieved, 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 wish to make a distinction.”
Additional Studying:
Interview with CNBC Africa “Ladies on Wealth” Nov 26, 2014
Inspirational success story for entrepreneurs: a biography of Jennifer Riria by Maramentor
Small loans, huge ambition an interview with the Monetary Instances Jun 6 2014
Why Microfinance and Ladies? A speech at Ladies’s World Banking
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