For those of you who are just had a small heart attack reading the subject heading, yes, Rob and I had a one on one meeting with George Soros today for almost an hour.
The meeting went fabulously. The team prepared us very well with notes, pointers -- everything. (Thank you SJ! Also a big thank you to Natalia, Susie, Natalie and Mona who all pulled together for this meeting with research, powerpoints etc.)
My opening line was from Shijie's notes -- 'IIX is an evolution in capital markets that will help us pursue social justice and public interest more efficiently' -- we had Soros right there.
It was then 45 minutes of great discussion with a brilliant mind. No power points, no paper -- just back and forth -- simulating, exciting discussion.
He liked our approach -- holistic and focused on wrapping stock exchange with social justice. We talked about the various details of IIX and he wants us to talk more with his colleagues.
He is a very kind man with the most intelligent eyes. He is sharp, curious and to the point. I really liked him.
What an amazing experience it was. I can't wait to get him more involved in creating this next revolution with the stock market but this time for social good...
Saturday, May 8, 2010
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
Power to Impact
This article by Lauren Tan came out on Prestige Magazine, March 2010 issue
FOUNDER OF ASIA’S ONLY SOCIALSTOCK EXCHANGE DURREEN SHAHNAZ SHARES WITH LAUREN TAN THE INSPIRATION BEHIND HER BRAND OF CONSCIOUS CAPITALISM
PRESTIGE 96 MARCH 2010
We expected the usual power suit, but Durreen Shahnaz, the founder and chairperson of what is to be a new stock exchange come 2011, is wearing a vegetable dyed sari instead.
Its material so light and supple, it flutters in the breeze. The image is powerful. The ex-investment banker and high flying media exec turned entrepreneur is, indeed, the face of a kinder and more conscious form of capitalism. Her Singapore-based Impact Investment Exchange (IIX). Asia’s first social stock exchange will be a capital market for social good. It is a lofty goal, but Shahnaz has never
known how to aim for anything less.
The idea to create IIX didn’t come in an aha-moment. Whenever I talk about IIX, I really have to go back to almost the beginning of my career as I feel that with this, everything has sort of come together,” the 41-year-old explains from behind her desk at the Lee Kuan Yew (LKY) School of Public Policy, where she wears a second hat as adjunct associate professor and head of the school’s social innovation programme.
Her career began as an investment banker at Morgan Stanley in New York. Two years of hundred-hour work weeks later, she traded in Wall Street for the dirt roads of
her native Bangladesh where she went to work for microcredit financier Grameen Bank. It was the first time she put her financial knowledge to use in a social setting. Grameen’s borrowers, most of them women, were the rural poor and illiterate. Many were her age, too she was then 24 but they were a universe apart.
Returning to the United States, she turned to the other industry with far-reaching in!uence $the media. It would allow her a chance to see how one could strike a balance between giving the public what they wanted and what they should want. She rose through the ranks, and by age 30 made VP at Hearst Magazines (then the youngest to do so in the history of the company which counts Harper’s Bazaar, Cosmopolitan and Marie Claire in its stable of titles). In 1999, she turned in notice and set up oneNest.
Earlier at Grameen, she had seen women default on loans because there were no venues to sell their wares. OneNest, a New York-based cyber marketplace, would connect them as well as the village artisans and co-operatives from around the world to the western market. But oneNest’s mission wasn’t a high placed priority for many of its financiers. “For them it was all about the returns they were going to get by selling the company. That was a major disappointment for me,” she says candidly. In 2004,
she sold the company to Novica, the catalogue division of National Geographic. “By this point, I had very little say in the company. And what stayed with me even after that was that it was so difficult raising capital when it should really be the opposite when you are bringing both financial and social returns,” she says.
Shahnaz took a job running Reader’s Digest’s Asian operations out of Singapore, and on the side, wrote op-ed pieces about creating capital market infrastructure
around social businesses. In 2008, the LKY School offered her a position to teach a class on social innovation. It was an attractive proposition. The students there
would go back to their government positions where they could influence policies that would make or break a social entrepreneur.
About the same time, the Rockefeller Foundation also came knocking. They wanted to help set the wheels in motion for IIX. “For me, the fact that I had this idea,
and I had this amazing partner that actually believed in what I was saying, was a little surreal. And it all came together so quickly,” she shares. “It’s like all the experiences I had, and all the things I’d done, was really about me trying to reach this point. In childhood, in the evolution of my career, and even in graduate school where I did an MBA [at Wharton] and a public policy degree [at Johns Hopkins], I was always sort of straddling [the private and public sectors]. Now, I feel the exchange has pulled these together.”
#e timing was right, too. Not only was there an emerging group of social investors
in the financial market, Singapore was increasingly cast as a hub for social enterprise. Marrying what Singapore was good at, which is financial institutions and financial markets, with social enterprises, seemed a natural fit. “Coincidentally, that can now happen through the exchange!” the self-described optimist pronounces.
IIX plans to operate as a trading platform for social enterprises to raise growth capital. All entities that list on the exchange will undergo third party validation and report regularly on their financial and social results. The investor purchasing shares and bonds will be attracted to transparent disclosure. In essence, an investor will enable social good while seeking to maximise financial returns.
It’s been a fantastic ride, thus far at least (she’s known to say that the romance of starting a company always goes out the window in the %rst week). In December, she
learnt &within a span of an hour . that she had been selected to the 2010 class
of fellows of both the Asia Society and TED in recognition of her work at IIX. A
month later, the exchange received its first grant of US$495,000 from the Rockefeller Foundation. The money would help take IIX from business plan into reality come 2011, and marked only the second time in the foundation’s 97-year history that a grant was awarded to a for-pro%t entity.
Shahnaz was born the fourth daughter of a Muslim family in patriarchal Bangladesh.
While her parents embraced her arrival, humiliation was cast on the family. “I think
I somehow absorbed it. And at the back of mind always felt that I had to prove that I’m worthy of being of this planet,” she shares. “As I always say, some of the things that happen in life, which you don’t have any control over are
the ones that sort of define you.”
Having no desire to play into gender discrimination, her parents channelled their
energy into their daughters’ education. Another focus was in imparting a strong of sense of social service. One memory Shahnaz keeps to this day is handing out rice by the gate of their home to the poor on Fridays, the holy day for Muslims. “My parents always said that whatever you do, you have to give back to society because we are from a poor country, and we are lucky, you are lucky, to be getting all this opportunity,” she recalls.
Her teenage years were spent in the Philippines, where her government official father represented the Indian sub-continent on the Asian Development Bank’s board of governors. When it came time for university, it was expected that she, like her sisters, would study in India. But Shahnaz exhibited her characteristic independent streak. It had go"en into her mind that the US, although she had never been, was
where she could truly be herself.
Her parents consented on condition she enrolled in an all women’s university. #eir pick was Wellesley College, where they knew Madam Chiang Kai-Shek to be an alumna. “I said to them, ‘I’ll only go to Wellesley if you know her actual name, not her husband’s’,” she recalls. Shahnaz ended up, instead, at Smith College, the
bastion of the American feminist movement, which counts activists Gloria Steinem and Betty Friedan among its alumnae. Gi(ed and resolute, Shahnaz, was active in social causes throughout college, but le(Smith with the realisation that if she wanted to e!ectively bring about change, she couldn’t veer too far to the le(. “I’m the type
who wants to change the system from within,” she explains.
For love and marriage, she de%ed her parent’s wishes again. While at Morgan Stanley, she had met Robert Kraybill, an investment banker from New Jersey. Kraybill was until recently enjoying early retirement, but has now been roped in as managing director of IIX. #ey have two daughters, an eight-year-old and a four-year-old.
“I’m supremely lucky. I have wonderful little kids. My grandmothers were both married at 11 or 12 and they barely knew how to read and write. And then my mum, she went to college and got a degree, so that was a leap. And with my sisters [a doctor, a teacher and a development worker] and I, it’s been another leap. I always tell
my daughters that they come from generations of women who have done so many things. And it’s nice for me to be able to share that with them,” she says.
PRESTIGE 98 MARCH 2010
FOUNDER OF ASIA’S ONLY SOCIALSTOCK EXCHANGE DURREEN SHAHNAZ SHARES WITH LAUREN TAN THE INSPIRATION BEHIND HER BRAND OF CONSCIOUS CAPITALISM
PRESTIGE 96 MARCH 2010
We expected the usual power suit, but Durreen Shahnaz, the founder and chairperson of what is to be a new stock exchange come 2011, is wearing a vegetable dyed sari instead.
Its material so light and supple, it flutters in the breeze. The image is powerful. The ex-investment banker and high flying media exec turned entrepreneur is, indeed, the face of a kinder and more conscious form of capitalism. Her Singapore-based Impact Investment Exchange (IIX). Asia’s first social stock exchange will be a capital market for social good. It is a lofty goal, but Shahnaz has never
known how to aim for anything less.
The idea to create IIX didn’t come in an aha-moment. Whenever I talk about IIX, I really have to go back to almost the beginning of my career as I feel that with this, everything has sort of come together,” the 41-year-old explains from behind her desk at the Lee Kuan Yew (LKY) School of Public Policy, where she wears a second hat as adjunct associate professor and head of the school’s social innovation programme.
Her career began as an investment banker at Morgan Stanley in New York. Two years of hundred-hour work weeks later, she traded in Wall Street for the dirt roads of
her native Bangladesh where she went to work for microcredit financier Grameen Bank. It was the first time she put her financial knowledge to use in a social setting. Grameen’s borrowers, most of them women, were the rural poor and illiterate. Many were her age, too she was then 24 but they were a universe apart.
Returning to the United States, she turned to the other industry with far-reaching in!uence $the media. It would allow her a chance to see how one could strike a balance between giving the public what they wanted and what they should want. She rose through the ranks, and by age 30 made VP at Hearst Magazines (then the youngest to do so in the history of the company which counts Harper’s Bazaar, Cosmopolitan and Marie Claire in its stable of titles). In 1999, she turned in notice and set up oneNest.
Earlier at Grameen, she had seen women default on loans because there were no venues to sell their wares. OneNest, a New York-based cyber marketplace, would connect them as well as the village artisans and co-operatives from around the world to the western market. But oneNest’s mission wasn’t a high placed priority for many of its financiers. “For them it was all about the returns they were going to get by selling the company. That was a major disappointment for me,” she says candidly. In 2004,
she sold the company to Novica, the catalogue division of National Geographic. “By this point, I had very little say in the company. And what stayed with me even after that was that it was so difficult raising capital when it should really be the opposite when you are bringing both financial and social returns,” she says.
Shahnaz took a job running Reader’s Digest’s Asian operations out of Singapore, and on the side, wrote op-ed pieces about creating capital market infrastructure
around social businesses. In 2008, the LKY School offered her a position to teach a class on social innovation. It was an attractive proposition. The students there
would go back to their government positions where they could influence policies that would make or break a social entrepreneur.
About the same time, the Rockefeller Foundation also came knocking. They wanted to help set the wheels in motion for IIX. “For me, the fact that I had this idea,
and I had this amazing partner that actually believed in what I was saying, was a little surreal. And it all came together so quickly,” she shares. “It’s like all the experiences I had, and all the things I’d done, was really about me trying to reach this point. In childhood, in the evolution of my career, and even in graduate school where I did an MBA [at Wharton] and a public policy degree [at Johns Hopkins], I was always sort of straddling [the private and public sectors]. Now, I feel the exchange has pulled these together.”
#e timing was right, too. Not only was there an emerging group of social investors
in the financial market, Singapore was increasingly cast as a hub for social enterprise. Marrying what Singapore was good at, which is financial institutions and financial markets, with social enterprises, seemed a natural fit. “Coincidentally, that can now happen through the exchange!” the self-described optimist pronounces.
IIX plans to operate as a trading platform for social enterprises to raise growth capital. All entities that list on the exchange will undergo third party validation and report regularly on their financial and social results. The investor purchasing shares and bonds will be attracted to transparent disclosure. In essence, an investor will enable social good while seeking to maximise financial returns.
It’s been a fantastic ride, thus far at least (she’s known to say that the romance of starting a company always goes out the window in the %rst week). In December, she
learnt &within a span of an hour . that she had been selected to the 2010 class
of fellows of both the Asia Society and TED in recognition of her work at IIX. A
month later, the exchange received its first grant of US$495,000 from the Rockefeller Foundation. The money would help take IIX from business plan into reality come 2011, and marked only the second time in the foundation’s 97-year history that a grant was awarded to a for-pro%t entity.
Shahnaz was born the fourth daughter of a Muslim family in patriarchal Bangladesh.
While her parents embraced her arrival, humiliation was cast on the family. “I think
I somehow absorbed it. And at the back of mind always felt that I had to prove that I’m worthy of being of this planet,” she shares. “As I always say, some of the things that happen in life, which you don’t have any control over are
the ones that sort of define you.”
Having no desire to play into gender discrimination, her parents channelled their
energy into their daughters’ education. Another focus was in imparting a strong of sense of social service. One memory Shahnaz keeps to this day is handing out rice by the gate of their home to the poor on Fridays, the holy day for Muslims. “My parents always said that whatever you do, you have to give back to society because we are from a poor country, and we are lucky, you are lucky, to be getting all this opportunity,” she recalls.
Her teenage years were spent in the Philippines, where her government official father represented the Indian sub-continent on the Asian Development Bank’s board of governors. When it came time for university, it was expected that she, like her sisters, would study in India. But Shahnaz exhibited her characteristic independent streak. It had go"en into her mind that the US, although she had never been, was
where she could truly be herself.
Her parents consented on condition she enrolled in an all women’s university. #eir pick was Wellesley College, where they knew Madam Chiang Kai-Shek to be an alumna. “I said to them, ‘I’ll only go to Wellesley if you know her actual name, not her husband’s’,” she recalls. Shahnaz ended up, instead, at Smith College, the
bastion of the American feminist movement, which counts activists Gloria Steinem and Betty Friedan among its alumnae. Gi(ed and resolute, Shahnaz, was active in social causes throughout college, but le(Smith with the realisation that if she wanted to e!ectively bring about change, she couldn’t veer too far to the le(. “I’m the type
who wants to change the system from within,” she explains.
For love and marriage, she de%ed her parent’s wishes again. While at Morgan Stanley, she had met Robert Kraybill, an investment banker from New Jersey. Kraybill was until recently enjoying early retirement, but has now been roped in as managing director of IIX. #ey have two daughters, an eight-year-old and a four-year-old.
“I’m supremely lucky. I have wonderful little kids. My grandmothers were both married at 11 or 12 and they barely knew how to read and write. And then my mum, she went to college and got a degree, so that was a leap. And with my sisters [a doctor, a teacher and a development worker] and I, it’s been another leap. I always tell
my daughters that they come from generations of women who have done so many things. And it’s nice for me to be able to share that with them,” she says.
PRESTIGE 98 MARCH 2010
Life coming in a full circle..
I was at Global Social Venture Conference last week. It was a great event where one could feel the spirit of social entrepreneurship in the air. I was excited about the potential about seeing 'red shirts' taking over Bangkok but that did not happen (too much of a bangladeshi -- love that political action..). However, what did happen was in a strange way my life came in a full circle --
For those of you who don't know, the birth of IIX is very linked to the birth and sale of OneNest. OneNest was my first baby and I gave my heart and soul to help hundreds of artisan groups, cooperatives, microfianance groups around the globe.
One the entities that we helped was Trade Craft. We really nurtured them and worked with them closely. Well, Friday morning I met Rosalind, the daughter of the founders of the company. She told me how we worked with at a crucial point when they were turning their entity from an association to a for profit entity and how her parents remembers oneNest fondly. And, now she was coming to me to help her get her entity market ready and how she wants Trade Craft to list on IIX . We both were blown away with the gravity of the moment (she said she was getting goose bumps and I just wanted to cry...). At that moment I realized how my life's mission never changed -- it always was and always will be to bring social change/justice and sustainable development to this world. In a very small way perhaps I did do something for this world...I hope I can do much more.
Life indeed comes in a full circle.
Sharon Neo at IIX (a web search guru) found my speech online here it is --
http://www.fringer.org/wp-content/uploads/audio/GSVC-Durreen.WMA , http://fringer.org/?page_id=410.
For those of you who don't know, the birth of IIX is very linked to the birth and sale of OneNest. OneNest was my first baby and I gave my heart and soul to help hundreds of artisan groups, cooperatives, microfianance groups around the globe.
One the entities that we helped was Trade Craft. We really nurtured them and worked with them closely. Well, Friday morning I met Rosalind, the daughter of the founders of the company. She told me how we worked with at a crucial point when they were turning their entity from an association to a for profit entity and how her parents remembers oneNest fondly. And, now she was coming to me to help her get her entity market ready and how she wants Trade Craft to list on IIX . We both were blown away with the gravity of the moment (she said she was getting goose bumps and I just wanted to cry...). At that moment I realized how my life's mission never changed -- it always was and always will be to bring social change/justice and sustainable development to this world. In a very small way perhaps I did do something for this world...I hope I can do much more.
Life indeed comes in a full circle.
Sharon Neo at IIX (a web search guru) found my speech online here it is --
http://www.fringer.org/wp-content/uploads/audio/GSVC-Durreen.WMA , http://fringer.org/?page_id=410.
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
TED
At TED. I was skeptical at first but my skepticism when out the window when i heard my fellow TED Fellows talk today. My god -- so much brilliance and innovation from such a small group of people. TED officially began today and basically everyone 'who is who' is showing up. Had a chance to talk to several financiers, TV producers etc.
The line of the day from one of the financiers -- 'Davos is so yesterday....TED is now -- today..where true mover and shakers of the world come to be inspired. If you are a TED Fellow, you really will save the world.'...Hummm, if only it were that easy...
The line of the day from one of the financiers -- 'Davos is so yesterday....TED is now -- today..where true mover and shakers of the world come to be inspired. If you are a TED Fellow, you really will save the world.'...Hummm, if only it were that easy...
Wednesday, December 16, 2009
Key Note Speech
Women’s Role in Social Enterprise
Honorable Minister Kumari Selja, Founder Trustee of WIC and Union Minister for Tourism and Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation, Government of India, The Leaders of Sree Shakti, Ladies and Gentlemen –
Assalamulaikum, Namaste and Good Morning!
I am honored to be with you today, as a Bangladeshi woman, speaking on behalf of over 700 million of my South Asian sisters. I would like to express my gratitude to Sree Shakti and all of you here today for coming together to recognize women’s role in nation building.
As a woman Social Entrepreneur, I have been asked to share with you my thoughts on Women’s role in Social Enterprises – entities that are changing and impacting the social and environmental canvass of South Asia and the rest of the world. If we are going to talk about Women’s role in Social Enterprise, we then need to talk about Women’s position in a society and about the role of social enterprises and entrepreneurship in that society.
Therefore, what I hope to do this morning is to briefly discuss the role of women in social enterprise, to touch on the role and importance of women’s entrepreneurship and to put it all in perspective with my own story.
I am in a unique position to be standing in front of you today to discuss today’s topic. I am the youngest of four daughters of a Muslim family. After I was born, my mother had to bear the shame of giving birth to a fourth daughter. My father was encouraged to marry again. My mother eventually recovered from the depression of giving birth to me, and my father did not remarry. Instead, they put their parental energy into our education. Although we had our social boundaries, nevertheless, we four girls became a doctor, a teacher, a development worker, and an entrepreneur.
My entrepreneurial spirit has never been based on a desire to make lots of money but on a desire to fight social injustice. Whatever the source of ones entrepreneurial spirit, it propels a person – especially a woman – to new heights of innovation and opportunity. Thus, I hope you will all go away from the talk today and do your part – whether nurturing your own entrepreneurial spirit or encouraging another woman entrepreneur in your own way – both because they truly hold the key to the success of the next generation and to make each of our countries a better place.
I was fortunate to have a career that spanned the full spectrum of private to public sector. I began my career as an investment banker at Morgan Stanley in New York. I was young and excited about being at the heart of the capital markets that made the financial system of this world work. However, when I arrived what struck me was what a small role women played in influencing and defining the capital markets of the world. During those days, in the entire staff of Morgan Stanley (which was then several thousand), there were less than 30 women bankers. And I have to say, from my Wall Street experience, I have to agree with the recent observations that some have made that the financial meltdown of the last 12 months could have been avoided if the large financial institutions were run by women.
I left Morgan Stanley to join Grameen Bank in Bangladesh. Similar to Morgan Stanley, Grameen offices in both the city and the villages were staffed largely with men. The difference was that almost all of the clients (at that point, around 2 lakh) were women. The women were clients not because anyone was doing them a favor but because they were better clients – they had better repayment rates than their male counterparts and they shared their income with their families. During that time, I was fortunate to meet thousands of these incredible women entrepreneurs who were fueling the engine of the rural economy and at the same time building Grameen into one of the most incredible success stories of social enterprise.
I was humbled and impressed by the women entrepreneurs I met in the villages. Because the system did not work for them, they were forced to innovate to survive in the system. More than 80% of the women I met while at Grameen were illiterate, and yet they were smart enough to figure out complicated concepts such as interest rate arbitrage (where at time some were becoming lenders themselves) and innovative management practices – like the woman who had her husband marry three more times and then hired those other wives into her growing weaving business.
These women neither saw themselves as heroines nor as hand-out cases – but simply as human beings who at last had the opportunity to stand on their own feet. And, every single woman I met, as soon as they saved some money they sent their children to school. And, every single one of these women told me that they did not want their daughters to have the same life as theirs.
Today, microfinance all over the world is one of the sexiest ‘asset classes’ and has become an essential fuel of the economy in many developing countries. I meet investment bankers who talk about the high financial returns of the MFIs and are creating sophisticated financial instruments around the MFIs. Sadly, I have not met a single banker who for a second talks about these millions of women across the globe who are fueling the MFIs and playing their role in nation building.
What are we doing for these women other than giving them small loans? Sadly, the answer is “not much.” And yet, we are creating and fueling fancy financial institutions on their back.
A recent article in the The Economist magazine said, ‘forget China, India and the Internet. Economic growth is driven by women.’ The article goes on to say that an increase in women’s employment, in both the developing and developed world, has been the biggest engine of global growth in recent decades.
And, as I have seen with my own eyes, experts are also pointing to the clear evidence that helping women to develop their skills and join the labor market boosts incomes and the well-being of society as a whole. It is now an established fact that educating girls boosts prosperity. The multiplier effect of that is – more productivity, income generation, healthier and better educated children – thus raising the welfare of the entire family and in turn nation.
Sadly, despite all this evidence, women remain perhaps the world’s most underutilized and under-recognized resource. Equal opportunity in the economic sphere is not a reality, and its absence is a drag on growth, development and poverty alleviation.
Globally, women are most heavily represented in micro and small businesses. That is not a surprise. This is due to legal, social and cultural forces which guide and in some way constrain their business decisions.
What do the women themselves perceive as their biggest obstacle? In Bangladeshi villages when I asked this question, the answer was access to capital, education, culture and support system. When this question was asked in the US, the answers were very similar, and to the list above the American women added trade, affordable health care, taxes, government policies, and media exposure.
Interestingly, if you look at these issues, they are concerns about accessing the capital and markets needed to grow profitable and sustainable business. And, they are about securing essential social protection. These concerns are common to all entrepreneurs in many countries, whether men or women. These are small business issues, not particularly women’s issues. However, because most representation in these small and micro businesses is from women, they become women’s issue. And women’s entrepreneurship needs special recognition because it constitutes an important untapped source of economic growth and societal wellbeing.
One group of entities which is trying to assist, among others, the disadvantaged, women and small businesses are Social Enterprises. Thousands of Social Enterprises (which can be defined as Social mission-oriented for-profit companies OR business-oriented non-profit entities) across the globe are working relentlessly to bring better livelihood, education, healthcare, sanitation and income opportunities to the poor and make this world a more equitable place. However, many of these entities struggle themselves to get sufficient capital and recognition for the work they are doing.
In response to this need, and to support these Social Enterprises and assist them in growing their impact, I founded Impact Investment Exchange, a social stock exchange for social enterprises in Asia. I was audacious enough to think that we can make investors care about more than just a financial return for their investment. And we did. I have been receiving resounding support from the financial sector and the public in creating this exchange, which will in essence assist social enterprises to increase their social impact and in effect assist millions of women and disadvantaged across the globe.
So, what is IIX? IIX will be Asia’s first social stock exchange, providing a trading platform and an efficient capital raising mechanism for Asian Social Enterprises (SEs), including both for-profit and not-for-profit entities with a social mission. IIX will connect these SEs with Impact Investors seeking to achieve both a social return and an economic return on their investment while providing capital to fund innovative social businesses.
In Asia (especially in South Asia) we face the gravest of the world’s challenges covering a whole spectrum of issues, including women’s empowerment, poverty alleviation, and environmental protection. It is SEs like Grameen Bank, BRAC, SEWA, BWDA, and Selco that are playing a leading role in confronting these challenges.
What can we do to assist them? What can we do to help them expand their impact? The answer is simple: to provide access to capital. Just as microcredit has given access to millions of individuals and given them an opportunity to create a new life, IIX will give access to capital to the SEs that assist millions. These SEs will be judged for the social and financial sustainability that they attain and they will help us broaden the definition of a ‘successful enterprise’.
We need many social enterprises, impact investment exchanges, private sector initiatives and public sector support to listen to the voices of women entrepreneurs. Gender specific constraints to entrepreneurship require well-supported specific policy responses.
These responses need to be financial, political and most importantly practical. Women need targeted training in how to start, manage, and grow businesses. Just as they need the entities like social enterprises to give them the structure to grow and sustain their businesses. Women and these social enterprises must lend their voices to efforts to identify and address laws and policies that do not adequately address their needs.
Now why is all this relevant to you? It is because you each have an important role to play in bringing about this positive social change.
As Ghandiji said, "We must be the change we wish to see”. If we want our nations to develop, if we want our children to be educated, if we want our environment to be clean, we will need to leverage the vast capabilities of the women in our society. Women in the audience: you have the power to change the world for the better…each in your own way -- as an entrepreneur, or a social entrepreneur; as a government policy maker, or one who influences government policy; as a leader and as an example. Everyone in the audience: we each need to support the women in our society; and, we need to support the entities that support these women…Women are the key to the future.
There is a saying that women must do twice as well as men to be thought half as good. Luckily, that is not so difficult. Just give us the chance, and we will show you what an incredible force we are.
Thank you for your attention, and thank you for supporting a just society, with opportunities for all men and all women.
Honorable Minister Kumari Selja, Founder Trustee of WIC and Union Minister for Tourism and Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation, Government of India, The Leaders of Sree Shakti, Ladies and Gentlemen –
Assalamulaikum, Namaste and Good Morning!
I am honored to be with you today, as a Bangladeshi woman, speaking on behalf of over 700 million of my South Asian sisters. I would like to express my gratitude to Sree Shakti and all of you here today for coming together to recognize women’s role in nation building.
As a woman Social Entrepreneur, I have been asked to share with you my thoughts on Women’s role in Social Enterprises – entities that are changing and impacting the social and environmental canvass of South Asia and the rest of the world. If we are going to talk about Women’s role in Social Enterprise, we then need to talk about Women’s position in a society and about the role of social enterprises and entrepreneurship in that society.
Therefore, what I hope to do this morning is to briefly discuss the role of women in social enterprise, to touch on the role and importance of women’s entrepreneurship and to put it all in perspective with my own story.
I am in a unique position to be standing in front of you today to discuss today’s topic. I am the youngest of four daughters of a Muslim family. After I was born, my mother had to bear the shame of giving birth to a fourth daughter. My father was encouraged to marry again. My mother eventually recovered from the depression of giving birth to me, and my father did not remarry. Instead, they put their parental energy into our education. Although we had our social boundaries, nevertheless, we four girls became a doctor, a teacher, a development worker, and an entrepreneur.
My entrepreneurial spirit has never been based on a desire to make lots of money but on a desire to fight social injustice. Whatever the source of ones entrepreneurial spirit, it propels a person – especially a woman – to new heights of innovation and opportunity. Thus, I hope you will all go away from the talk today and do your part – whether nurturing your own entrepreneurial spirit or encouraging another woman entrepreneur in your own way – both because they truly hold the key to the success of the next generation and to make each of our countries a better place.
I was fortunate to have a career that spanned the full spectrum of private to public sector. I began my career as an investment banker at Morgan Stanley in New York. I was young and excited about being at the heart of the capital markets that made the financial system of this world work. However, when I arrived what struck me was what a small role women played in influencing and defining the capital markets of the world. During those days, in the entire staff of Morgan Stanley (which was then several thousand), there were less than 30 women bankers. And I have to say, from my Wall Street experience, I have to agree with the recent observations that some have made that the financial meltdown of the last 12 months could have been avoided if the large financial institutions were run by women.
I left Morgan Stanley to join Grameen Bank in Bangladesh. Similar to Morgan Stanley, Grameen offices in both the city and the villages were staffed largely with men. The difference was that almost all of the clients (at that point, around 2 lakh) were women. The women were clients not because anyone was doing them a favor but because they were better clients – they had better repayment rates than their male counterparts and they shared their income with their families. During that time, I was fortunate to meet thousands of these incredible women entrepreneurs who were fueling the engine of the rural economy and at the same time building Grameen into one of the most incredible success stories of social enterprise.
I was humbled and impressed by the women entrepreneurs I met in the villages. Because the system did not work for them, they were forced to innovate to survive in the system. More than 80% of the women I met while at Grameen were illiterate, and yet they were smart enough to figure out complicated concepts such as interest rate arbitrage (where at time some were becoming lenders themselves) and innovative management practices – like the woman who had her husband marry three more times and then hired those other wives into her growing weaving business.
These women neither saw themselves as heroines nor as hand-out cases – but simply as human beings who at last had the opportunity to stand on their own feet. And, every single woman I met, as soon as they saved some money they sent their children to school. And, every single one of these women told me that they did not want their daughters to have the same life as theirs.
Today, microfinance all over the world is one of the sexiest ‘asset classes’ and has become an essential fuel of the economy in many developing countries. I meet investment bankers who talk about the high financial returns of the MFIs and are creating sophisticated financial instruments around the MFIs. Sadly, I have not met a single banker who for a second talks about these millions of women across the globe who are fueling the MFIs and playing their role in nation building.
What are we doing for these women other than giving them small loans? Sadly, the answer is “not much.” And yet, we are creating and fueling fancy financial institutions on their back.
A recent article in the The Economist magazine said, ‘forget China, India and the Internet. Economic growth is driven by women.’ The article goes on to say that an increase in women’s employment, in both the developing and developed world, has been the biggest engine of global growth in recent decades.
And, as I have seen with my own eyes, experts are also pointing to the clear evidence that helping women to develop their skills and join the labor market boosts incomes and the well-being of society as a whole. It is now an established fact that educating girls boosts prosperity. The multiplier effect of that is – more productivity, income generation, healthier and better educated children – thus raising the welfare of the entire family and in turn nation.
Sadly, despite all this evidence, women remain perhaps the world’s most underutilized and under-recognized resource. Equal opportunity in the economic sphere is not a reality, and its absence is a drag on growth, development and poverty alleviation.
Globally, women are most heavily represented in micro and small businesses. That is not a surprise. This is due to legal, social and cultural forces which guide and in some way constrain their business decisions.
What do the women themselves perceive as their biggest obstacle? In Bangladeshi villages when I asked this question, the answer was access to capital, education, culture and support system. When this question was asked in the US, the answers were very similar, and to the list above the American women added trade, affordable health care, taxes, government policies, and media exposure.
Interestingly, if you look at these issues, they are concerns about accessing the capital and markets needed to grow profitable and sustainable business. And, they are about securing essential social protection. These concerns are common to all entrepreneurs in many countries, whether men or women. These are small business issues, not particularly women’s issues. However, because most representation in these small and micro businesses is from women, they become women’s issue. And women’s entrepreneurship needs special recognition because it constitutes an important untapped source of economic growth and societal wellbeing.
One group of entities which is trying to assist, among others, the disadvantaged, women and small businesses are Social Enterprises. Thousands of Social Enterprises (which can be defined as Social mission-oriented for-profit companies OR business-oriented non-profit entities) across the globe are working relentlessly to bring better livelihood, education, healthcare, sanitation and income opportunities to the poor and make this world a more equitable place. However, many of these entities struggle themselves to get sufficient capital and recognition for the work they are doing.
In response to this need, and to support these Social Enterprises and assist them in growing their impact, I founded Impact Investment Exchange, a social stock exchange for social enterprises in Asia. I was audacious enough to think that we can make investors care about more than just a financial return for their investment. And we did. I have been receiving resounding support from the financial sector and the public in creating this exchange, which will in essence assist social enterprises to increase their social impact and in effect assist millions of women and disadvantaged across the globe.
So, what is IIX? IIX will be Asia’s first social stock exchange, providing a trading platform and an efficient capital raising mechanism for Asian Social Enterprises (SEs), including both for-profit and not-for-profit entities with a social mission. IIX will connect these SEs with Impact Investors seeking to achieve both a social return and an economic return on their investment while providing capital to fund innovative social businesses.
In Asia (especially in South Asia) we face the gravest of the world’s challenges covering a whole spectrum of issues, including women’s empowerment, poverty alleviation, and environmental protection. It is SEs like Grameen Bank, BRAC, SEWA, BWDA, and Selco that are playing a leading role in confronting these challenges.
What can we do to assist them? What can we do to help them expand their impact? The answer is simple: to provide access to capital. Just as microcredit has given access to millions of individuals and given them an opportunity to create a new life, IIX will give access to capital to the SEs that assist millions. These SEs will be judged for the social and financial sustainability that they attain and they will help us broaden the definition of a ‘successful enterprise’.
We need many social enterprises, impact investment exchanges, private sector initiatives and public sector support to listen to the voices of women entrepreneurs. Gender specific constraints to entrepreneurship require well-supported specific policy responses.
These responses need to be financial, political and most importantly practical. Women need targeted training in how to start, manage, and grow businesses. Just as they need the entities like social enterprises to give them the structure to grow and sustain their businesses. Women and these social enterprises must lend their voices to efforts to identify and address laws and policies that do not adequately address their needs.
Now why is all this relevant to you? It is because you each have an important role to play in bringing about this positive social change.
As Ghandiji said, "We must be the change we wish to see”. If we want our nations to develop, if we want our children to be educated, if we want our environment to be clean, we will need to leverage the vast capabilities of the women in our society. Women in the audience: you have the power to change the world for the better…each in your own way -- as an entrepreneur, or a social entrepreneur; as a government policy maker, or one who influences government policy; as a leader and as an example. Everyone in the audience: we each need to support the women in our society; and, we need to support the entities that support these women…Women are the key to the future.
There is a saying that women must do twice as well as men to be thought half as good. Luckily, that is not so difficult. Just give us the chance, and we will show you what an incredible force we are.
Thank you for your attention, and thank you for supporting a just society, with opportunities for all men and all women.
Invitation
International Women's Centre
&
Stree Shakti-The Parallel Force
Invite you to the Luncheon Reception
&
Annual Stree Shakti Awards
Guest of Honour
Prof Durreen Shahnaz
Head, Social Innovation Programme, Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, Singapore
Founder and Chairman, Impact Investment Exchange Asia (IIX)
Winner of Dayawati Modi Stree Shakti Samman
Madhavi Mudgal
Eminent Dancer
Winner of Stree Shakti Science Samman
Prof Rupamanjari Ghosh
Eminent Scientist
Book Release II Edition of A Quest for Roots By
Hon’ble Minister of Tourism Kumari Selja
on December 12, 2009
Time: 12 Noon
at
3 Suneheri Bagh Road
New Delhi 110011
streeshaktik@gmail.com
intwomencentre@gmail.com
&
Stree Shakti-The Parallel Force
Invite you to the Luncheon Reception
&
Annual Stree Shakti Awards
Guest of Honour
Prof Durreen Shahnaz
Head, Social Innovation Programme, Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, Singapore
Founder and Chairman, Impact Investment Exchange Asia (IIX)
Winner of Dayawati Modi Stree Shakti Samman
Madhavi Mudgal
Eminent Dancer
Winner of Stree Shakti Science Samman
Prof Rupamanjari Ghosh
Eminent Scientist
Book Release II Edition of A Quest for Roots By
Hon’ble Minister of Tourism Kumari Selja
on December 12, 2009
Time: 12 Noon
at
3 Suneheri Bagh Road
New Delhi 110011
streeshaktik@gmail.com
intwomencentre@gmail.com
Recognition of IIX work
I had quite a surreal evening last night. I found out that I was nominated for 2 prestigious fellow positions:
1. Asia Society Asia 21 Fellow (the next step to young leader recognition I received couple of months ago) where 25 fellows are chosen from Asia and the US as lifelong policy makers for Asia Society.
2. TED 2010 Fellow: http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/ted-announces-recipients-of-next-25-ted-fellowships-79216142.html
This is truly humbling and overwhelming. I hope I can use these opportunities to further expand the work of incredible Social Enterprises and Impact Investment Exchange.
1. Asia Society Asia 21 Fellow (the next step to young leader recognition I received couple of months ago) where 25 fellows are chosen from Asia and the US as lifelong policy makers for Asia Society.
2. TED 2010 Fellow: http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/ted-announces-recipients-of-next-25-ted-fellowships-79216142.html
This is truly humbling and overwhelming. I hope I can use these opportunities to further expand the work of incredible Social Enterprises and Impact Investment Exchange.
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