Location: São Paulo, Brazil
Village Capital Partner: Artemesia
About Grace…
A Ghanaian-American, Grace graduated from Washington and Lee University before entering the Monterey Institute of International Studies to receive her Master of Public Administration degree. She traveled to Brazil this past fall to become proficient in Portuguese and help manage the Village Capital program in São Paulo as a Frontier Market Scout. Grace’s personal and career interests lie in using business as a tool for sustainable economic development, and she hopes to participate in the impact investment sector in her native Ghana one day.
In the Field…
While assisting with Artemesia’s Village Capital Program, Grace had the opportunity to work closely with one social entrepreneur in particular, Fernando Botelho. While a visionary, Fernando is also blind. With the help of Grace, Artemesia, and Village Capital, Fernando was able to fine-tune his business model and fundraising plan for a truly market-based solution. With the combination of a USB drive and CD-Rom, his software can transform any PC into a 100% accessible device for the blind and visually impaired. In terms of social impact, this product could bring computer accessibility and thus employment to over 200 million blind and visually impaired individuals at an affordable price world-wide. Loyal to her entrepreneurs, Grace continues to work with Fernando in helping him connect with industry professionals such as Mark Shuttlesworth, founder of Ubuntu, so that he may continue to grow and scale his social enterprise.
Additionally, Grace had the opportunity to contribute to the Village Capital Blog where she reflected on themes such as cultural and linguistic barriers between impact investors, social entrepreneurs, and the accelerators that try to bring them together. With the Monterey Institute she hopes to use this research to improve educational efforts around impact investing and social entrepreneurship.
