MEMBA Alum Inspires Mexican Women to Cultivate Economic Independence

Requiring $1,000 to $1,500 in financing for each production cycle, Zoila Hernández de la Cruz’s aquaculture ponds can hardly be considered big industry. But to Hernández and the four other poor women who launched the enterprise (called Las Cruces), scraping together even that amount of money would have been impossible without Van Mujeres, a new micro-credit institution developed by Soraya Pérez Munguía, executive director of Instituto Estatal de las Mujeres (The Institute of Women) in Tabasco, Mexico. 

Pérez graduated from the McCombs School’s Executive MBA Program in Mexico City in May. Insights garnered throughout her MBA education provided the vision for Van Mujeres. “The MBA has totally changed my perception on how to handle an organization and my collaborators,” she says.

Van Mujeres is a comprehensive economic and support system that has so far trained about 15,000 women to form savings and loan groups and to start individual and joint small business activities supported by new microfinance programs. Pérez says the organization tagline is “More Than a Bank” because, in addition to giving credit and receiving savings, it trains women, helps them to form groups and develop sustainable and feasible projects, monitors the execution of the projects and empowers women by addressing issues like self-esteem, human rights and family violence.

“It wasn’t just the traditional skills in finance and banking that have helped me,” Pérez says of the program. “Two of the most important skills I learned are how to lead people and how to inspire partners.”

Pérez’s vision for Van Mujeres is to spread its benefits to all of Mexico, beginning with Tabasco’s neighboring states of Chiapas, Campeche, Veracruz and Yucatán over the next two years. “For this expansion, we are seeking partnerships with leaders and international organizations involved in women-based sustainable rural development and microfinance programs,” she says. “We are looking to attend to not just 15,000 women, but in fact 15 million women!” Her master plan is to reach that goal by 2015.

The changes in the lives of women and entire communities are already being seen. The Las Cruces tilapia farm provides both food for the female entrepreneurs and their families as well as a product they can sell at market value for a net profit of about $1,000 per production cycle.

They have also begun cultivating organic vegetables along the borders of their fishponds, which they sell to earn additional income. “Through their business, they engage in integrated production, improve their incomes and contribute to satisfying food needs locally,” explains Pérez. “It’s a win-win for the women and their communities.”

She illustrates, “I went to Cárdenas last weekend to see Mrs. Hernández, and she told me, ‘I have opened my eyes; I have realized that I can be supported by myself economically and personally. Now my sons can attend school, and I can feed them every day.’”

One woman, one small business, one community at a time, Pérez hopes to affect the economic fiber of her country. And the McCombs School is proud to have played a role in her fulfilling career. “My UT MBA not only represents to me a lot of hours of hard work, but it also represents commitment, prestige and a way to build my network,” Pérez says. “The University of Texas EMBA in Mexico City is por mucho, mi mejor y más grande experiencia (so far, my best and biggest experience)!”