Interviews

María Michelena is the Co-Founder and Executive Director of InGenia Uruguay, an outsourcing and strategic consultancy services company based in Montevideo. Established in 2003, InGenia specializes in risk management for Uruguay’s financial sector. Michelena is also Chairwoman of OMEU (Organización de Mujeres Empresarias, Ejecutivas y Emprendedoras del Uruguay), a nonprofit founded in 2009 to enhance women’s economic development and promote the visibility of women entrepreneurs in Uruguay.

Michelena begins the interview by providing an overview of her educational background, noting that she had an interest in business and finance from a young age. After studying business management in Uruguay and interning at IBM, she pursued an MBA at Adolfo Ibáñez University in Chile where she developed a particular interest in capital markets. Upon graduating in 1997, she decided to return to Uruguay and start a career in banking at Banco Santander. By 2002, she had developed expertise in financial, operational, and reputational risk, leading to her appointment as head of the group's retail banking risk management committee in Uruguay. Michelena describes this career path as the first part of her story before deciding to pursue her aspirations in entrepreneurship.

Amid the banking crisis in Uruguay in 2002, Michelena saw an opportunity to establish InGenia. Starting with one client, she describes the importance of “stepping up” and taking risks, viewing crises as a chance to innovate and reinvent efficient business processes. She also emphasizes the importance of cultural diversity as a key takeaway from her banking career – a lesson she brought to InGenia. As an example of its importance, she notes her view that bank failures in Latin America have been associated with a tendency to replicate international operating models without taking cultural uniqueness into account.

On innovation in the financial sector, Michelena contends that an organization’s corporate culture defines the ability to drive change. Based on her experience in banking and at InGenia, she outlines what she views as basic tents for innovation – open-mindedness, room to make mistakes, and diversity of opinions. She discusses organizational adaptability, providing examples of situations where she has encountered reluctance to change in areas such as cybersecurity. Despite statistics claiming that about 90% of cyber-attacks are caused by human error, she explains how she has found resistance when introducing remedies such as password management policies.

As InGenia grew, Michelena became increasingly involved in mentorship for other entrepreneurs in Uruguay by participating in nonprofits such as Endeavor starting in 2015. She also became an “angel investor,” supporting new Uruguayan ventures and applying her background in risk analysis to aid their growth. In this role, she encountered an OMEU program called Más Emprendedoras (“More Entrepreneurial Women”) which promoted the development of Uruguayan companies led by women. She started working with OMEU as a mentor, focusing on women’s self-perception. Michelena believes this is an important factor, noting that while more than half of university students in Uruguay and elsewhere are women, they account for less than 10% of high-level decision-making roles in business and government.

One of the key areas of OMEU’s impact concerns financial education and access for women throughout Uruguay. Michelena emphasizes her view on the importance of financial literacy as a foundational life skill. She explains how it provides women with the tools necessary for economic autonomy, enabling them to secure their livelihoods, especially in the case of vulnerable situations posed by domestic or gender violence. Regarding access to financing for entrepreneurs, she highlights an OMEU initiative designed to help female entrepreneurs make their business plans more appealing to investors. This program also works with investors interested in supporting women-led ventures.

Michelena continues by addressing OMEU’s role in implementing gender equality certifications in Uruguay, which have become increasingly valuable to companies and fulfill one of the UN’s SDGs (Sustainable Development Goals). However, she observes the extent of “social washing” among businesses – practices that “look inclusive, diverse, socially responsible, caring for the community where they operate, when they are not any of those things.” She explains how over time, she has developed an ability to detect whether compliance with gender equality standards represents a “checklist” or a genuine commitment that is represented in the organization’s corporate mission.

To conclude the interview, Michelena discusses OMEU's evolution from an organization primarily focused on business networking to one that facilitates women's professional and holistic development in Uruguay. She describes how, despite remaining a smaller-scale organization, OMEU has gained a unique proximity to local leaders and facilitated public policymaking. Additionally, Michelena describes the personal leadership style she has brought both to OMEU and InGenia. Overall, she emphasizes the importance of remaining approachable, inquisitive, and creative to foster team collaboration.

 Close