Former Avon CEO Andrea Jung claims to be the product of a microloan.
Jung’s grandparents immigrated to the U.S. from China, and although her grandmother didn’t speak English, she somehow obtained an informal microloan to launch a salon.
“We were a family in poverty,” said Jung, who was the keynote speaker at the 6th Annual High Water Women's 2018 Investing for Impact Symposium in Manhattan on Wednesday. “My grandmother hired one, then two employees and just one generation later, my father went to MIT. It would have never happened if she had not received a little bit of capital.”
Today, Jung’s life has come full circle. After retiring from Avon in 2012, she is now at the forefront of the gender equality movement as the president and CEO of Grameen America, a microlending organization whose priority is low income women entrepreneurs across the nation.
“Gender equality is an important part of ESG investing,” Jung told an auditorium of some 500 people at the conference. “The case has been made economically that the biggest emerging market in the world is not a country. It’s women. It’s empowering women economically.”
Globally, countries are leaving $160 trillion on the table by neglecting inequality in earnings over the lifetime between women and men, according to a World Bank Group study of 141 countries.
“This is a stark reminder that world leaders need to act now and act decisively to invest in policies that promote more and better jobs for women and equal pay at work,” stated World Bank CEO Kristalina Georgieva in a statement online.
Grameen America serves women who are usually not eligible for loans from traditional banks and who are largely excluded from the mainstream U.S. financial system.
“If women had equal representation, equal pay and equal access to capital, we would create $30 trillion in global GDP growth,” Jung said.
Grameen America offers access to capital to women entrepreneurs who have at least $800 in savings; so far, the organization has reached $1 billion in loans disbursed to more than 100,000 women.