From a very young age, Caterina felt a need to take action to tackle injustice. That’s what led her to study development economics and her first job, working on a microfinance project in Africa.

You joined Alterfin ten years ago. What was it about the company that appealed to you?

I always wanted to work for a company where I could have more impact on people and the planet. Alterfin ticked every box. It specializes in microfinance, an area in which I have plenty of experience. It also finances agriculture-related projects, and agriculture is an extremely important sector when it comes to improving the living conditions of local populations and combating the effects of climate change.

And I also really like the fact that Alterfin is a cooperative: it’s not an investment fund, it’s an organization founded and managed by people like you and me. As a result, it’s more flexible and can adapt to the different circumstances of each partner.

I started out as an investment manager, before becoming Head of Investments. Today, I’m Alterfin’s Chief Impact Officer. This position in a new department reflects our commitment to maximizing the impact of our work on society and the environment.

As a woman in a leadership position, what is your greatest strength?

I think that it’s empathy. I try to use it to better understand our teams and the organization and, of course, to help our employees to identify and develop their own strengths for a truly satisfying career. But it’s very useful when it comes to our investments, especially when managing delicate issues like late payments and defaults. Combining purely financial analysis with a degree of empathy makes it possible to find better solutions.

Do you think it’s important to have more women in leadership positions?

I believe—and several studies have shown—that companies with female leaders tend to develop a less hierarchical and more collaborative culture. A Harvard Business School study found that women have a higher emotional quotient. Women-led businesses are also more diverse and inclusive and have a smaller gender pay gap.

Alterfin has recently developed a gender-lens investing strategy. What does that mean?

It’s a strategy that we’ve developed in partnership with Value for Women, a company that works to empower women in society. We try to focus on women-led organizations and women-focused organizations.

The gender lens adds a new dimension to our investment analysis and enables us to support these companies and help them grow. It also helps us fight poverty more effectively: unfortunately, women are often among the poorest members of society. And we know that investing in women’s development improves families’ security and prosperity.

To implement this strategy, we’ve added gender-related criteria to our existing assessment tool. This enables us to assess the extent of our partners’ inclusiveness in terms of their staff, customers and suppliers. In addition, we can identify the two categories of organizations that we want to target more effectively.

The first category is women-led organizations, which we can identify by analyzing the proportion of women in management positions, on the board of directors, and among shareholders. The second category is women-focused organizations. We can identify those by analyzing the proportion of products and services targeted to women and their involvement as smallholderfarmer suppliers.

‍

What does it mean for Alterfin’s partners and beneficiaries?

We want to encourage our partners to be inclusive. It’s our end-goal,but not necessarily a prerequisite. In the future, we’ll work with our existing and potential partners to help them achieve certain predefined objectives. Remember, inclusive businesses also perform better overall: our partners will be able to improve their impact on the communities they support. We will also conduct further market research to identify the organizations that best meet the criteria for both categories.

‍

And what does it mean for Alterfin?

We’re basically formalizing an already existing practice. This will allow us to use this information systematically and in a more structured way. And because we want to set an example, we’ve also applied this analysis to Alterfin as a company. Overall, the results are good, but we’ve identified some areas where we can do better, such as the composition of our investment committee. So ultimately this process will benefit us as well.