- The women in our company have been acting as mentors
done only through Global Ambassadors
but other programs such as Cherie Blair.
They do wanna pay it forward and they're passionate
about it and so over the 10 years, 84 countries as you say,
352 women, very intensive program in the room all week long
not to mention staying in touch for a long time afterward
and how impactful that can be.
But it's also taken us on a journey
because we saw the impact and we saw the need.
And so now we have morphed into going from hundreds
of women to thousands and thousands of, tens of thousands
of women really through other programs
such as our partnership with Cornell University,
the Women Entrepreneurs Center for Cornell.
- Xiomara, I wanna start with you.
You were mentored by Karen Fang
a Bank of America executive.
And I know that, that experience had a profound impact
on you and was really helpful in your business.
Obviously, as we know, Nicaragua has undergone political
turmoil, violence, instability in the last few years.
And I can imagine that's difficult on a business.
So talk a little bit about that experience
and the impact it had.
- Thank you, Alyse.
I have the life transformational gift of this mentorship
with Karen Fang who's the Head of Sustainable Finance
Global Sustainable Finance at Bank of America.
And what it did for me really is it definitely helped
me make big projections for the business that I had created.
It helped me dream a lot bigger than I had.
But beyond that, it helped me see myself as a different kind
of leader and make a commitment that was much bigger
than I thought to myself, to my business
and definitely to my country.
In countries like Nicaragua, power can be seen
as something negative.
And what I learned through this mentorship is that power
can be used in a very positive way.
And it can be infused with leadership to create something
great in that country or in that community.
- So Sbu, I know that the program had a huge impact on you.
But it's enabled you to have an impact on the children
that you work with, talk a little bit about that.
- One of the highlights for me of the GAP program
was having a bank supporting Vital Voices
the way Bank of America does.
As a bank had it was something that was foreign to me.
I just always saw anything social versus,
money making as totally different worlds.
So one of the benefits of being part of the program
was we're able to tap into virtual mentors
at the Bank of America in order to put together
our business proposals.
'Cause one of the key things for me that was trying
to achieve a sustainability of the work that we're doing.
And what that did for me was it gave me an even
broader network of women from the Bank of America staff.
- Akanksha, I wanna turn to you for the last word,
any advice that you might have for those who are tuning in.
Who wanna start a business, but also wanna have an impact?
Can you do both?
- The journey of business, building a business
or setting out on solving a problem is a very long one.
And I think the thing that carries you through
the tough times, including something like COVID
on a pandemic is that you really care
about the mission and the why.
And to be honest, that in most cases
that why has to be impact because building
a business is hard.
And I think if you're motivated by just capital,
it's, it may not go very far or carry you through
those difficult days and difficult nights.