Archive for the ‘Roberson, Amanda’ Category

By Amanda Roberson
MBA Candidate, 2012 

Our Proyecto Salta internships culminated last week with a celebratory gathering of the women entrepreneurs we trained during our three months in Lima. We weren’t quite sure what to expect when planning this event, but we could not have been more pleased with the results.

About half of the 120 women came to the party, an amazing turnout considering their busy schedules and the long distances they had to travel across this massive city to get there. One memorable moment was seeing the group of women we worked with from Manchay, a remote community formed on a dusty mountainside, come walking in a proud pack down the sidewalk to the entrance of the event. They had shed their practical polar fleeces for high heels, suits, makeup and new hairstyles. Giddy after making the journey to San Isidro, they posed for multiple photo shoots before entering the building and many more once they were inside. 

But perhaps the greatest highlight was hearing the women share their experiences with Proyecto Salta as they formed a circle and took turns introducing themselves. Although their businesses vary from small corner stores to costume shops to pharmacies, they share many things in common. They all find innovative ways to balance the demands of being mothers, wives and entrepreneurs. They all started with small businesses and have hopes of seeing them grow.

Without being prompted to do so, they explained how they are applying what they learned through their Proyecto Salta training in their businesses. The now infamous flujo de caja, or basic cash flow statement we taught them to manage their income and expenses, was a recurring theme. Many of them had never kept any type of accounting records, and they now view the flujo de caja as a powerful tool to gain control of their finances and ensure that their businesses are profitable. 

The circle activity took on the feel of group therapy at times as the women talked about the lack of support they receive from family, friends and neighbors. Machismo is alive and well in this culture, they said, and many people do not want to see women entrepreneurs succeed. With the universal goal of changing this stigma, the women then began to network among themselves. We interns stood back, watched and smiled they wasted no time making strategic connections. Milka, a seamstress, is going to make specialty dresses for Tania, who owns a formal clothing store. Marizol, an accountant, is going to help Tina continue to manage her debt while she helps Maria to formalize the newest part of her shoe business. Haydee found out about opportunities to pursue her dream of learning to make silver artisan jewelry. These are just a few of the connections made as energy and empowerment resonated throughout the group.

After many hugs and kisses, a few tears and a frenzy of photos, we said goodbye to our empresarias. As I leave Peru, I know that I will not forget any of the 24 women with whom I worked. I will remember their faces, their stories, their struggles and their successes. They inspire me enormously, just as they inspire each other.

By Amanda Roberson
MBA Candidate, 2012 

It started out as a regular Saturday. In need of some downtime and hungry for some of Peru’s world-class seafood, four of us Salta interns headed to La Mar Cebichería. One of Lima’s top restaurants, La Mar is a stallion in the culinary stable of Gaston Acurio, the chef responsible for putting Peru on the global food map. Little did we know we would be treated to more than just some delicious cebiche when Gaston showed up at La Mar to watch Peru battle Venezuela for third place in the Americas Cup soccer tournament. 

Not ones to pass up an opportunity, we took the liberty of introducing ourselves. Acurio was interested in hearing more about Proyecto Salta, and he invited us to his table and treated us to pisco cocktails after Peru defeated Venezuela 4-1.

Acurio is not only a natural chef; he is a natural social entrepreneur and an inspiration to the women we work with through Proyecto Salta. Just as he works wonders in the kitchen by calling upon Peruvian lime, seafood and chiles to reach new heights, he also challenges the country’s food industry to be pioneers of social and environmental responsibility. At his cooking school, Instituto Cocina Superior Tenológico Nuevo Pachacútec, he and his staff offer training for aspiring chefs from low-income areas. On his Facebook page (which has almost 420,000 fans), he shares everything from the concoction he whipped up for lunch to his musings that chefs are like soldiers. He recently posted:

 ”We cooks fight our battles always in the land of the kitchen and in everything that it positively influences: agriculture, fishing, nutrition, the environment, fair supply chains, exports, national identity, education, culture, innovation, added value, and the promotion of our work in the world. But from the kitchen. Political offices are for the politicians. Chefs are the soldiers.” 

After training at Cordon Bleu in Paris, where Acurio met his German wife Astrid, the pair opened Astrid y Gaston in Lima in 1994 (http://www.astridygaston.com/web/intro.php). Today, the Astrid y Gaston concept has been replicated in Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Venezuela, Spain, Mexico and Argentina. Understanding the value of creating a brand, Acurio went on to develop other Peruvian food concepts, each with a different twist. At La Mar, he focuses on cebiche (seafood cooked in fresh lime juice), while his Panchita restaurant showcases the traditional Peruvian kebob, or anticucho. A sandwich shop, juice bar and bakery are among the other brands in Acurio’s portfolio.

As we chatted with Peru’s entrepreneur in chief, he brought up a few of the issues on his mind: how to make sure fishermen get a fair price for their catch, the need for organic farmers markets in Peru and how to train restaurant owners in the best business practices. With his trademark curls and relaxed demeanor, Acurio hasn’t let international fame go to his head. Rather, he remains down to earth as he shoulders the responsibility and opportunity that come along with leading Peru’s food revolution. As he continues to dream up new flavors, he envisions his country achieving economic growth along with social and environmental justice.

The more we chatted with him, we realized that Acurio’s food, although memorable, isn’t what makes him unique. It is his desire to inspire his fellow entrepreneurs and live as proof that talent, natural ingredients and sound business practices are the recipe for positive change.

By Amanda Roberson
MBA Candidate, 2012

As Salta interns, we have been working in Manchay, one of Lima’s pueblos jóvenes, or young districts, as they are commonly known. It sprung up in the early 80’s, populated by residents of Peru’s interior who fled as Shining Path guerillas terrorized their villages in the name of bringing about a fundamentalist Maoist revolution (http://www.cfr.org/terrorism/shining-path-tupac-amaru-peru-leftists/p9276). For them, Manchay became a refuge and a new beginning.

Since then, it has grown significantly, although when making our way down dusty roads to visit the women entrepreneurs with whom we work, we see that it is still quite young. Water and electricity are not a given, and many houses are accessible only by long metal yellow stairs that take the place of the road when it ends.

Dina Alvaro, in her early 60s, lives with her family in Manchay and works as an artist, although she would never identify herself as one. During our first visit, she opened up a cabinet in her kitchen and pulled out item after item that she had made by hand: lace tablecloths, paintings on velvet, wool baby blankets, nativity scenes, crochets pillow cases, knit purses and more. She loves to keep her talented hands busy, in fact she feels that she has to.

“Sometimes when I can’t sleep, I get up at 3 or 4 a.m. and start working on something. I always have to be doing something, making something,” she explained. Innovation, creativity and production will never be a problem for Dina. Her problem, she says, is that she does not like to sell. After investing in the materials to make all of her treasures, Dina has a hard time recovering her costs. She’ll often have orders from people who have passed through Manchay thanks to the Catholic church’s heavy involvement there, but business is not steady. Dina’s neighbors live day to day, and her creations are out of their budgets.

After a couple of sessions working with Dina on how to interact with potential clients, calculate her profit margin and keep a basic cash flow statement, we headed to the artisan market of Miraflores, an affluent district of Lima where she could potentially find her target market.
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By Amanda Roberson
MBA Candidate, 2012 

“If you want to be happy, you don’t have to go out and search for happiness … just look for it, and you will find it in yourself.” This pearl of wisdom is among many Maria Frisancho wants to share with her fellow Peruvian women entrepreneurs. The owner of a successful children’s shoe business in a downtown Lima market, she started with little and grew her enterprise through relentless hard work and constant faith in her abilities. During our final Salta training session together, we sat at a table in the market’s cafeteria and she told me her story in hopes of inspiring others.

Like many Limeños (inhabitants of Lima), Maria’s family is from what Peruvians call the provinces, essentially the rest of the country outside of the capital. They moved to Lima when Maria was young. The oldest of nine children, Maria helped her parents and watched them run a meat business. Although she always had a latent entrepreneurial spirit, the meat business didn’t call out to her.

“I didn’t like to get my hands dirty,” she said. “What I liked was reading. I was always reading some kind of literature.” 

After finishing primary and secondary school, Maria’s studious nature led her to secretarial school, where she trained to be a legal secretary in hopes of later becoming a lawyer. She wanted to be able to protect her mother, who remarried a man who became abusive, she explained. Maria’s plan was cut short when she got married and had two children. Then along came the shoe business out of happenstance. Maria’s brother had a stall selling shoes in downtown Lima, and one day he asked her to help out. Immediately, the business grabbed her. 

“I didn’t know that I had it in me to sell,” she said. “I never knew that I had all that energy saved up inside of me.”
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By Amanda Roberson
MBA Candidate, 2012

One week ago, the world watched as Peru’s election results rolled in and an unpredictable scenario unfolded: leftist candidate Ollanta Humala narrowly defeated center-right leaning Keiko Fujimori. It was a chain of events most people in the Latin American world never would have imagined, including a group of Thunderbird students who were in Lima just a few months ago for the school’s Latin American module in Peru. I was part of that group of students back in February. During Professor Roy Nelson’s Latin American Business Environment class, we studied Peru’s political past with regard to its economic development and discussed the potential ramifications of this year’s election on the country’s business climate. As we gave our final presentation, our unanimous assessment was that Peru was likely to continue its impressive record of steady economic growth except in the unlikely event that Humala, a wild card known for supporting nationalization of industries and being chummy with Hugo Chavez, won. But that was a very remote possibility, we said. A slew of moderate, business-friendly candidates were in the running, and one of them was sure to win. We were wrong. 

Now the world continues to watch with anticipation as Humala picks his cabinet members, holds his first official visits with regional leaders and sends other signals about his intentions for his presidency. So far, it’s been a rollercoaster ride for Peru. On Monday, the day after the election, the country’s stock exchange plunged 12.45%, a fall Peruvian media outlets called the biggest in the exchange’s history, forcing its closure for two hours (http://www.eldia.com.bo/index.php?c=Portada&articulo=Peru:-Bolsa-de-Lima-tiene-su-peor-caida-historica-tras-victoria-de-Humala&cat=1&pla=3&id_articulo=64837). The market and the Nuevo Sol currency began to rebound later in the week as Humala appointed economic moderates to his transition team and called for unity (http://www.forexyard.com/en/news/Perus-markets-rebound-after-Humala-sell-off-2011-06-07T172822Z.) On Saturday, the front page of the Peruvian daily El Comercio featured Humala with his arm around former Brazilian President Luiz Ignacio Lula da Silva, popularly known as Lula. Humala spoke of Lula’s success in bringing about economic development while including the poor and said that he will be “inspired” by Brazil’s model without copying it (http://elcomercio.pe/politica/776035/noticia-lula-se-reunio-humala-nego-que-exista-fantasma-hugo-chavez-sobre). 

So, what to make of all of this? Will Humala follow Lula’s example and embark upon a path of inclusionary economic development? Or will his presidency really mean the end of the country’s business boom? In this case, I hope our previous predictions were also wrong.

As I entered my third week as an intern with Proyecto Salta, I spoke to Peruvians about their opinion of their new president and their predictions on what it could mean for their country. Their tones varied from celebratory excitement from those who voted for Humala to grim yet hopeful disbelief from those who opposed him. Maria Fris Sancho is the owner of a busy children’s shoe stall in a downtown Lima market. When we met on Monday afternoon, she told me she was sad for two reasons: (1) yesterday, someone had stolen 500 Soles worth (about $165) worth of merchandise from her stall and (2) Humala won. Regarding the latter, she said she feared a trickle-down effect. “The big companies leave. That means less jobs. That means people have less money, and that means that they buy less shoes from me,” she said. Our taxi driver Erver, an enthusiastic Keiko supporter, said he feared what Humala was capable of, given his past as a militant rumored to have instigated violence. Others said that Humala’s chumminess with Chavez (from whom he attempted to distance himself toward the end of the campaign) meant the Peruvian leader now owes a debt to his Venezuelan counterpart, and the consequences of that repayment could be scary.
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By Amanda Roberson
MBA Candidate, 2012

Alina Castillo’s corner store in San Juan de Lurigancho, Lima is as tiny and humble as she is. The rickety shelves hold an assortment of typical bodega fare; bags of plantain chips and crackers mingle with shampoo sachets and boxes of matches. The floor is covered with two-liter bottles of soda, her best seller. A window serves as both Alina’s point of sale and her customers’ means of communicating with her. Several people tapped on the pane eager to make a purchase during our three-hour meeting this past Thursday.

During my second week at Proyecto Salta, Alina stood out among the seven women I am working with as one of the star entrepreneurs in terms of effort and will to improve her business. In between visits from customers, she told me about her trade.

The bodega business is tough. These small stores are a dime a dozen in every part of the city, so shoppers can take their pick with no switching cost. Major distributors essentially have monopolies, making for slim margins when bodega owners are forced to buy items at a high price and make the equivalent of just pennies in profit. Overhead costs aren’t too high since many bodegas are part of the owners’ homes, eliminating the need for an additional rent payment. However, investing in equipment that can boost profits significantly, such as a large refrigerator or display case for cheese and meat, remains out of reach for many like Alina.

On top of the bodega owners’ lack of power against distributors, clients and competitors, the work itself can be tiring, or even “enslaving,” as I have heard a few Peruvians describe it. Though it may seem that having a business inside the home would save time, the opposite is usually true. In Alina’s case, her customers know that she can hear their window taps from her living area, so they don’t hesitate to tap at any hour of the day or night, even if it is 8 a.m. and she closed for the day just five hours ago.

Despite all of these challenges, Alina takes great pride in her business and is eager to learn how she can better manage it. Last week, we discussed the possibility of shortening her workday to focus on the evening hours, when she suspects that she makes the bulk of her sales. To assess the feasibility of this schedule change, we developed a small study of sales per hour for her to do throughout the week. The idea was for Alina to pick one day and record all of her sales in hour blocks, something she had not done before.

 When I arrived this week, I was happy to see that she had gone above and beyond completing this project. Her small cursive handwriting had filled five pages of a notebook as she recorded every sale and its amount for the entire week. As we examined her records together, our suspicions were confirmed that most of her sales were made between 3 a.m. and 3 p.m. She is now leaning toward closing the bodega during the morning hours. The trick will be getting her customers to respect her new hours and stop their early morning window tapping, but she thinks that with time they will adapt. She would also like to introduce some new products to capitalize on the lucrative evening hours. We brainstormed items that her nighttime customers, mostly neighbors on their way to a party or taxi drivers looking for something to keep them awake, would buy. She decided to try selling coffee to please the taxi drivers and crackers with tuna for the partygoers.

As we wrapped up our session, Alina scoured my folder of lessons on Cash Flow, Marketing, Creating a Mission and Vision and other topics. She told me she always wanted to study at a university, but economic and family circumstances prevented her from continuing after high school. She is excited to dive further into the Proyecto Salta materials and use them to come out ahead in the bodega game.

By Amanda Roberson
MBA Candidate, 2012

“I’m taking you to the end of the world!” our taxi driver Hector shouted as he deftly navigated the hillsides heading into the outskirts of Lima. Hector was quite surprised by some of the locations he took us to for our visits with women business owners. As a Peruvian police officer, he told us that even he had never been to some of these remote parts of the city. Despite Hector’s friendly concern and armed with  adventurous spirit and a toolbox of basic business skills to teach, we five interns headed deep into the barrios of Lima where the business owners who are a powerful part of their country’s economy reside.

Thursday marked the end of our first week working as part of Proyecto Salta, an initiative to train women business owners in skills that can help them strengthen and grow their enterprises. Not knowing quite what to expect, I headed out each day to be amazed as I met each woman and heard her unique story. As women in this Latin American country, they are the driving force not only of their families, but of their communities and their businesses. They tackle the challenge of juggling multiple roles every day with determination and resolve. Although they may lack the basic skills they need to maximize their businesses, they are eager to learn and are happy to receive the one-on-one training Salta offers.

Here is a snippet of the women’s stories:

Ana Maximina, the first woman I met with, lives in the district of Comas where the blocks are assigned zone numbers that escalate along with the road up the hillside. She buys clothes, mostly school uniforms, and sells them at the local Comas market. She’s been doing this work for years, but recently her profits have begun to decrease as many competitors have moved into the market selling the same products at various qualities. As she enters her mid-sixties, Ana is growing tired of the arduous effort of getting to the market every day at 7 a.m., unpacking her stall, selling into the evening hours and packing back up again. She believes she could earn more by sewing uniforms and selling them to vendors. Her daughter Elizabeth, who worked for years in a sewing shop, could help.

Edith lives in another district called San Juan de Lurigancho, Lima’s biggest. Like Comas, it begins with bustling avenues and transforms into a dusty mountainside dotted with colorful homes as the road putters to an end. She started her business selling cleaning products she makes in her home, but she would rather work as a seamstress, she told me as we chatted across her sewing machine. A neighbor who has a thriving sewing business sends her pockets to sew into jeans, and Edith tackles a pile of them each night after her two children go to bed. It’s steady work, but her simple sewing machine can’t do more than sew pockets and basic straight lines. She wants to save up to buy two more sophisticated machines, and her friend has already promised her that she has more than enough work to send Edith’s way once she has the proper equipment.

Martha is the matriarch of a family of three women. When she became a widow twenty years ago, she began selling meat at the daily market in her section of San Juan de Lurigancho. The business has done well and allowed her to maintain a two-story house in the middle of town with tiled floors and nicely upholstered furniture, amenities most of her neighbors lack. Health problems have stopped her from working at the market every day, but her oldest daughter Elizabeth has happily taken over. Although the business continues to do well, the family doesn’t know when they will be able to achieve their goal of expanding the sales counter and buying a new refrigerator. Like most of the small business owners I have met with, they do not maintain any type of accounting system. As she chopped away at a giant cow liver to sell that day, Elizabeth told me she is excited to work together on learning some basic accounting practices that can empower her to fully take over and expand the business.

Anila runs a lively bodega in the center of San Juan de Lorigancho. Her niche is serving customers late at night as they search for a snack, a single cigarette to smoke, or some pisco to take to a party. She also sells the basics you find at most bodegas, or Peruvian corner stores, such as sodas, snacks, cleaning products and toilet paper. She takes pride in her small shop, but the work is exhausting. She opens every day at 10 a.m. and works until 2 or 3 a.m. Realizing that she can’t keep up this schedule forever as health problems set in, she would like to develop a plan that allows her to maximize profits. Establishing a basic accounting and inventory system will be a good first step. Her speedy math skills and expertise in the market will guide her in the right direction.

Marizol’s story is different from that of the other women. An accountant with one successful office close to the center of Lima, she recently opened another office in Magdalena, a bustling district that borders the Pacific Ocean. She hopes to offer Magdalena’s small business owners accounting services that can help them manage their finances and provide the proper documentation to banks when necessary. Young, energetic and extremely busy, Marizol told me of her hopes for the new office as we chatted on the office couch. She wants to develop a marketing plan that will help her partner, who is managing the Magdalena office, to enter this new market.

This is just a snapshot of the women who are part of Proyecto Salta. Working with each of them for three more three-hour sessions, I look forward to seeing what we can accomplish together to hopefully make some of their aspirations a reality.