Catalina Escobar

Activist, Philanthropist, Social entrepreneur

Catalina Escobar is a Colombian woman, graduated in 1993 at Clark University (USA) with a degree of Business Administration, studies she combined with other academic programs in Europe and Japan at Kansai Gaidai University in Osaka. In 1997 she completed a M.B.A. at the INALDE in Bogota. She began in the banking and private fields, when in 2001 she created what would become her passion and greatest project of life: The Juan Felipe Gomez Escobar Foundation, after living two tragic and painful experiences in the year 2000. She has been invited several times to different conferences regarding Social Innovation, Accountability in nonprofits, Strategies in Fundraising, Leadership in NGO`s, among others. Some of the conferences have been in Spain with Comunidad de Madrid, LatinFinance in New York, DLDWomen in Munich, as well as different conferences in Colombia with Ventures, ADECCO, ExxonMobil, General Motors. Her active participation in this field has made Catalina a well-recognized entrepreneur with a great social sense and spirit, as well as to be an example of leadership among the Colombian society. She has been recognized by different financial and business Colombian magazines as most Successful Young Leaders (Revista Dinero, 2003), also acknowledged within one of the most important Colombian Social Innovators (Revista Poder, 2008), as well as Main Leaders in Colombia in the year 2011 (Revista Gerente). The Colombian President, Juan Manuel Santos, awarded her with National Merit Award Order in 2011. In 2012 she was selected by the U.S. State Department with other 25 women worldwide to be part of the Fortune/U.S. State Department Global Women´s Mentoring Partnership. She became a Top 10 CNN Heroes 2012. In 2013, Women eNews awarded her as 21 Leaders for the 21st Century in the US. She also is awarded as Top 10 Best Colombian Leaders 2103 by Revista Semana, and received The Poder Business Award. Currently she is an Ashoka Fellow.

Social transformation, sustainable growth, leadership, and empowering teen moms in extreme poverty (break their poverty cycle).

How with a great model of intervention we can break the poverty cycle of hundreds of teen moms. Colombia is a country marked with a great social despair, where girls and women are victims of violence, huger, poverty, prostitution. The problem is very big, but government assistance very low in its social impact. With a great model of intervention, we have proven to break the poverty cycle in Cartagena (caribbean region), by empowering women and giving the a 360 intervention, so they can move forward.

infant mortality, teen pregnacy

People talk about empowering women. It `s the most important issue discussed worldwide the past 8 years. But one thing is talk about the issue, give a lecture, but another thing is to work hands on, in the field, and prove that you are really empowering women. I have worked 13 years to make not only positive changes, but really transformative changes, in more then 2,500 teen moms in extreme poverty conditions in Cartagena. it is a business-driven model, done with great passion, with a lot of structure, great team, and achieving results. Poverty should be taken a serious matter.

Our model is scalable, replicable ans sustainable.