With my tattered journal in hand, I arrived back at the DFW International Airport four months after studying Spanish in Buenos Aires and trekking 2,858 miles (4600km) alone throughout South America. Wide-eyed in my own country, I felt the onset of reverse culture shock. How naïve I had been to expect to fall back into my previous routine, as if I had encountered nothing irregular in the extreme economic and social distress of six developing nations. It was during this transitional period that my life's work, once destined for Wall Street, was transformed into a campaign against global poverty.
This was no sudden epiphany, but the outcome of a wide range of events that challenged me to refocus my energy. That redirection began after I read a Fortune Magazine article highlighting Dr. Muhammad Yunus's vision to "put poverty into the museums." That was the first time I had heard of Yunus or of terms like "microfinance" and "social entrepreneurship." My mind immediately flashed mental snapshots of "Peruvian Shanty Towns" from my recent trip, inspiring a personal call to action. So when I discovered "The Chiapas Project," a Dallas-based microfinance organization, and its plans to create a program called Recycle to Eradicate Poverty (RTEP), there was no longer any question about my immediate future.
The goal was simple: recycle cell phones and inkjet cartridges as a fundraiser for microfinance loans to the poor, brokering the loans through the Grameen Foundation, and the recycling through Phoneraiser. Since its inception at the University of North Texas in March 2007, Recycle to Eradicate Poverty has educated the community about the need to discard these items properly (because they contain toxic chemicals that can leach into water) and to become engaged in advancing the concept of microfinance loans to impoverished peoples.
Our efforts with Recycle to Eradicate Poverty supplemented The Chiapas Project's $3.5 million commitment to the Grameen Foundation's Latin American Initiative with an additional $10,000; that sum, in turn, translated into some 200 microfinance loans through Grameen-sponsored microfinance institutions. I traveled to one of these institutions—Al Sol, in Chiapas Mexico—at a time when I had many unanswered questions in my research. The trip provided answers, combining dialogue with bank practitioners and my first official encounter with the poor as proud microfinance borrowers.
I used experience in this area to write an honors thesis that allowed me to research the theoretical and practical dimensions of microfinance, with an emphasis on both non-profit and for-profit approaches to this vehicle of social remediation. This side-by-side comparison of a microfinance institution from both models revealed strong trade-offs and ultimately the need for all sides to collaborate in a developing industry. The task of funding the poor's demand for credit around the world, estimated to be about $300 billion dollars U.S., requires more capital and the addition of new international rating and regulation systems. I learned that, as a microfinance institution shifts from a non-profit to for-profit model, the quantity of available funding sources increases. This shift, in theory, creates additional funding for loans, helping more people.
I was concerned that this transition might compromise an organization's social mission with the duty to maximize shareholder wealth. I found that this has become a problem, negatively affecting poor borrowers, and that different types of capital investors have different expectations. A purely commercial investor funds an organization to achieve high financial returns, which in the case of microfinance, could potentially be done at the poor's expense. A more socially minded investor, however, funds an organization based on double bottom line (social and economic) performance measures. The latter is more suitable for microfinance investments, which are relatively new to the market, because additional funding for expansion can be obtained without also receiving pressure to compromise an organization's social mission for higher returns. With the application of this knowledge over time, the microfinance industry will respectively position itself alongside the capital market to ensure fair access to credit for every person in need. I wish to help make that happen.
My mind is occupied with recent advances in the industry, such as microfranchises or the use of microfinance as a platform to provide other non-financial services (health and education) for the poor that represent a new foundation that future leaders will continue to develop. These innovative ideas fall into a much broader category for change led by social entrepreneurs like Bill Gates and Jeff Skoll. With their experience in business and knowledge of the world, they have helped to create the belief that sustainable businesses, regardless of their for-profit or non-profit status, can solve many of the world's problems. I am convinced that we need to combine this approach with the experience gained from past mistakes. Many failed aid projects in Africa, for example, nobly imported free food to feed the hungry; but during the process, those measures bankrupted local farmers and crippled those countries' agriculture industries.
Achieving an Msc. in Economics for Development and an MBA at the Skoll Centre for Social Entrepreneurship will allow me to better understand the implications of these economic decisions and more clearly define my role within this global undertaking. I am attracted to Oxford because it is the international hub for exchanging ideas of this sort, renowned for the work of Valpy Fitzgerald and Stephan Chambers in this area of economic development.
My academic and geographical adventures have led me not just to wonder how the world will change in coming years, but also to resolve to become a part of an initiative that will overcome the obstacles we face collectively. I am convinced that leaders can meet rising challenges with innovative solutions. I have been blessed with finding my true passion at an early age, along with the capacity and commitment to embrace it into the future. Continuing my studies for degrees in Economics for Development at Oxford and a Skoll MBA will better prepare me to actively contribute my part to a progressive agenda..