Valeria Díaz Romero

Poverty has a woman's face. Data shows how women have less access to wealth. In Bolivia, 7 out of 10 women have a vulnerable job. Only 14% of businesses in Latin America and the Caribbean are in the hands of women. Limited access to financing for entrepreneurship hinders women's economic equality. Faced with this situation, young business administrator Valeria Díaz Romero set herself a goal: to make it easier for women who decide to start their own business to get the help they need to prosper and thus help reduce poverty and inequality. 

Her answer to the challenge is called Munay, a support community for women entrepreneurs who do not have access to financial products from traditional banks. This initiative applies artificial intelligence to make women entrepreneurs visible and to finance and train them. For this project, Diaz Romero has been chosen by MIT Technology Review in Spanish as one of the 35 winners of Innovators under 35 Latin America 2022. 

The community for Bolivian women entrepreneur’s mentor women to give them the knowledge and initial moral support needed to launch their projects. It also gives them access to quality financial products quickly, such as nanocredits, along with monetary education. She explains, "Financial inclusion refers to access, use, and quality of financial products. Economic inclusion is key to closing inequality gaps and there is no way to achieve this without going hand in hand with sound knowledge." Another feature of Munay is the visibility it gives to the companies registered on the platform. Díaz Romero's development uses artificial intelligence and tokens to provide the best service to entrepreneurs and ensure better use of their resources. 

With a portfolio of clients in Bolivia, Díaz Romero aspires to achieve a base of entrepreneurs who require access to Munay's mentoring and financing that will allow her to expand throughout Latin America. The young innovator elaborates, "We are the only initiative to support entrepreneurship with a gender perspective, driven by artificial intelligence, with gamification strategies, digital productive credits, and a support community."