2022 Emerging Leader Award: Nicole Van Der Tuin MPA ’12

Nicole Van Der Tuin MPA ’12 is the Chief Growth Officer at Accion Opportunity Fund and co-founder and former CEO of First Access. First Access was conceived while Nicole was a student at SIPA and has grown into an award-winning fintech company that enables data-driven credit across emerging markets in Africa, Asia, and Latin America.

Transcript

“I've always been interested in the juxtaposition of haves and have nots and how you can have deep economic security for one person and then a few feet away from them, have somebody who lives with almost none.

I worked in China, Madagascar, France, and Senegal on issues around financial inclusion for a microfinance organization. It was very difficult at that time and is still fairly hard for people to prove that they are creditworthy and to get access to a loan. I realized that there was a real solution out there: that if you could turn data into insights for financial institutions on behalf of small business owners, you could help increase access to capital and ultimately reduce the cost of it. Nobody believed that it was possible.

So ultimately, I realized that if someone was going to try it, that had to be me. I started building technology and trying to build some solutions for access to credit in particular, and I realized I needed to go to grad school, and I needed to understand more about management, technology, statistics, and social change.

When I was a student at SIPA, I was able to create First Access, which is a social enterprise that initially used mobile data to help financial institutions in emerging markets reach small business owners. My classmates and professors were really supportive, and I used a lot of my SIPA classes as an opportunity to hone the idea and to get more input. After I graduated, I took the initial startup capital that I had raised and went to Tanzania, and we raised multiple rounds of capital and we built multiple generations of our technology. And we helped save cumulatively over 400 years of wait time for small business owners to get their loans. The more we can deliver resources and capital to small businesses quickly and easily and efficiently and fairly, the better off they will be. And that sustains livelihoods. It reduces income inequality. It increases economic security. It supports families and communities and the country and the world.

It has been really important to me to keep an ongoing relationship with SIPA because it's been such a launchpad for me. Staying engaged with alumni and setting an example for students and helping them and just being there as a sounding board, building those relationships, being available; it helped me build courage when people did that for me, and I would not have been able to do any of this without SIPA. I rarely stop to kind of look back and think about what the effects of my work have been and what I've helped build with so many other people.

This is an awesome opportunity to say thank you and I am so grateful for the support and the ideas and the wisdom. What you can build, and what that can accomplish, is what gets me up in the morning. I’ve always been interested in the juxtaposition of haves and have nots and how you can have deep economic security for one person and then a few feet away from them have somebody who lives with almost none. I worked in China, Madagascar, France and Senegal, on issues around financial inclusion for a microfinance organization. It was very difficult at that time, and is still fairly hard for people to prove that they are credit worthy. And to get access to a loan, I realized that there was a real solution out there that if you could turn data into insights for financial institutions, on behalf of small business owners, you could help increase access to capital and ultimately reduce the cost of it. Nobody believed that it was possible.

So ultimately, I realized that if someone was going to try it, that had to be me. I started building technology and trying to build some solutions for access to credit, and I realized I needed to go to grad school, and I needed to understand more about management, technology, statistics and social change. When I was a student at SIPA, I was able to create first access, which is a social enterprise that initially used mobile data to help financial institutions and emerging markets reach small business owners, my classmates and professors were really supportive. And I used a lot of my SIPA classes as an opportunity to hone the idea and to get more input.

After I graduated, I took the initial startup capital that I had raised and went to Tanzania, we raised multiple rounds of capital, and we built multiple generations of our technology. And we helped save cumulatively over 400 years of wait time for small business owners to get their loans. The more we can deliver resources and capital to small businesses quickly and easily and efficiently and fairly, the better off they will be and that sustains livelihoods. It reduces income inequality; it increases economic security. It supports families and communities and the country and the world.

It has been really important to me to keep an ongoing relationship with SIPA because it's been such a launchpad for me, staying engaged with alumni and setting an example for students and helping them and just being there as a sounding board building those relationships being available. It helped me build courage when people did that for me. And I would not have been able to do any of this without SIPA. I rarely stopped to kind of look back and think about what the effects of my work have been and what I've helped build with so many other people. This is an awesome opportunity to say thank you.

And I am so grateful for the support and the ideas and the wisdom. What you can build and what that can accomplish is what gets me up in the morning.”