Becoming a social entrepreneur

Maria Theresa Villatoro describes her journey to become a social entrepreneur and her project "STEM in box". 

Maria Theresa Villatoro graduated cum laude from ESCP business school where she studied Management in London,Turin and Berlin. She currently works in financial management at Universidad Francisco Gavidia specializing in digital transformation and student development. She's a Watson Institute scholar, a Yunus and youth fellow and global changemaker alumni. 

Transcript

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Maria Theresa Villatoro graduated cum laude from ESCP business school where she studied Management in London.,Turin and Berlin. She currently works in financial management at Universidad Francisco Gavidia specializing in digital transformation and student development. She's a Watson Institute scholar, a Yunus and youth fellow and global changemaker alumni. As a social entrepreneur, she firmly believes that a tech-driven education is our best bet for empowerment while striving for national development. Through her initiative, STEM in a box, her team is committed to distributing robots assembled from electrical, trash and cardboard and Latin America and Africa.

Emma: 1:13

Welcome, Maria. Thank you so much for joining me today. It's lovely to have you. Do you want to start just by introducing yourself and telling us a little bit about you?

Maria: 1:22

Yeah, thank you, Emma. It's a great pleasure to be here with you for this speaker series. So my name is Maria. I was born in the US in the bay area, but spent most of my childhood in El Salvador, both of my parents are from there. And then we started traveling a bit more, for my Dad's work. That's why I finished high school in New York and then went straight out to Europe to pursue my undergrad. I found a very cool program where I got to move cities every year. I was in London for a year and Turin for a year and then finally in Berlin. So I will say that cultural and just being in different places has always been a big part of who I am. Outside work I like to play tennis, I meditate, I do yoga. I love going on walks. And I love the sun. So every time the sun is shining I'm outside.

Emma: 2:34

Super. Yeah. I like the sun too, but being based in Scotland, I think there's maybe a bit less of it here! That sounds really exciting. And so do you still like to travel? Do you do a lot of traveling still?

Maria: 2:48

Yes. I try to I'm really happy that it's starting to be a possibility again, after so long where we were just based in the same place. But yeah, I love traveling.

Emma: 3:04

Great. Yeah. It's much nicer now, a bit easier to travel again. So hopefully it stays that way. And so here, we're chatting about work and your projects and you're working on some really cool stuff. So would you mind telling us a little bit more about your work and what you're currently working on?

Maria: 3:23

Yes. So the project I'm currently working on is called"Stem in a Box". It's a tiny shoe box where we put electric waste, technological materials and step-by-step assembly guides to teach at risk youth, mainly girls, how to assemble robots. Our main goal with that is to show them the practical application of math and hopefully inspire them to pursue a university degree in that field. We have been working on this since 2019, we're currently operating in Nigeria and El Salvador mainly, but have started the procedure deployment for other countries. So this year we'll be in seven countries around the world, which makes us very happy. But yeah, that's a little bit on"Stem in a Box" and what we do.

Emma: 4:24

Yeah, such an interesting project. Such a great idea. And how did you first sort of come across this idea. Is it a problem that's been something that's passionate that you're passionate about, or how did you first sort of design this idea?

Maria: 4:39

Yeah. So it has been a really long process in a way. I will always like to start by sharing the story behind it and the real inspiration. My paternal grandmother is the mother of seven children. Growing up, she loved plants, herbs, and experimented with their natural health benefits. And even today, 90 years after she has an outstanding long-term memory, unfortunately when the time to enroll her in school came, her parents decided she must stay home to look after her siblings. And that's why she never made it to school and never learned how to read or write. And this is such a special reality about her that I didn't find out till I was 17 I believe. And that's when I realized that my reality was very different to childrens' reality in El Salvador. And I started having conversations with her, with my father, trying to understand what it was that they did differently when raising me. And soon enough, we realized that it was education. That the only reason why I had a better life or better living condition than some of my cousins was because my Dad understood very early on that the only way out of the village will be through education. He became a pilot and diplomat very proudly. And that's, that's also, again, when I understood that connection and that I wanted to create an impact in the education space, the idea didn't come to life from one day to the other, after having that realization. I will say it took about a year, till we visited the Fiat-Chrysler HQ in Italy and they have a very similar thing where they take one of their assembly pack robots to teach children from kindergarten throughout university about math, art, music. And in our case it was logistics exercises. Um, so yeah, I'm a business major. I was majoring in finance and that's when I saw that connection of what you could do with robotics. For a while, we, we tried to bring one of the robots to El Salvador but the budget was so high that I got disappointed very quickly, because I knew what that amount of money could do at home, just in terms of infrastructure at schools, until one day I was having lunch with my two best friends and one of them just stopped me and she was like, why don't you create your own robots? And. A couple of years after we have three do it yourself robots thanks to that conversation.

Emma: 7:56

Wow. Yeah, it's a really interesting journey into it, and from finance as well. So is this always something that you've wanted to do being in this sort of social impact space? Or do you feel like it's been a pivot in your career when you had this initial idea?

Maria: 8:15

So I wouldn't say it's something I always wanted to do. However, I always had a connection with this space. My maternal grandmother founded a university in El Salvador 40 years ago when we were just transitioning from the civil war period. And my mother has worked there for about 30 years as well. So for a really long time, I thought that my mom took the easy road, because sometimes working under your parent, people might assume it's easy. It's not, they're the toughest boss you'll ever have. But I decided that way that she stayed so long in a place where she wasn't exploiting her potential and was just being complacent. So. For a really long time I didn't admit it to myself that education or the social impact space was what I wanted to do. When I was working in finance, I think I was trying to prove things to myself, to my parents, to my friends, but after the pandemic, I decided to join their team at the university in their financial analysis department. And very quickly I realized that's not what I wanted to do. I transitioned to the digital transformation team and started working on their processes and automating them. And that's when I fell in love with the institution and the mission it stands for. And it wasn't only until this January where I took the courage to quit and focus on"Stem in a Box" entirely. So I will say that that question has also been a journey where I had to be patient and very compassionate towards myself.

Emma: 10:19

Yeah. Yeah. That's really interesting. Yeah. Especially the compassionate side as well. I think it can be really easy to get stuck in trying to make decisions and thinking if you're making the right decisions and where to go. And yeah, I think it does take that time. So what does a typical day look like for you? I think it's, it's quite early where you are. Is that right? So normally early starts?

Maria: 10:48

Yes. So I usually start my day early. I'm more of a morning person. And on a perfect day, I get to meditate before I get out of bed or rather out of my room. I usually have some meetings in the morning because almost half of my team is based in Africa. So it's easier to do the meetings in the morning. After that I go to class, I'm currently doing a semester major program in Boulder, so I go to class for a few hours then do some more meetings. And then in the afternoon is my time to do my work and fulfill my responsibilities in the project. Sometimes I do a lot of design work creating the assembly guides. I fell in love with doing the graphic design of that part as well. And I would say that lately, most of my responsibilities are around funding and, um, once we ensure we have the funds, there's a lot of logistics involved for us to deliver the tools. So those are the two hardest parts of our intervention, securing funding, and then making sure we meet that promise. And then after work, sometimes I play tennis, go on a hike. And then just have some dinner, read a book, go to bed and that's it on a weekly day.

Emma: 12:34

Yeah. It sounds like a really nice balance as well for time to yourself and times to have some meditation alongside the main sort of project and work that you do.

Maria: 12:45

Definitely the balance is very important, but that again is a process that has taken a lot of patience and a lot of discipline. So yeah, definitely. I try to be about, yeah.

Emma: 13:01

Yeah. Always trying and aiming to get a little bit better each day, I think. Do you have any tips or advice for someone who is looking to either enter the social impact sector or maybe has an idea that they're looking to take forward? Anything that you would have given, advice to yourself say, a few years ago when you were starting out.

Maria: 13:25

Yes. So I will say it is finding community and the way you can do that is through the multiple international organizations that support youth led initiatives. I think I'm going to focus on the community aspect of it. The work we do gets very lonely. You can be working very hard for a project for a couple of months, and you're not going to see where you hard work went to till two months after sometimes that moment happens once a month. Sometimes if you're lucky every two weeks. So it's a really long process where you don't always see results in the, in the short run. And that is where your community comes in. You need people that are your age that have similar passions and missions to be around you and to help you through the hard days when you need it. When I started working, for example, that sense of community was Global Changemakers. It's a Swiss-based organization. They have mentorship programs. They have a changemaker school where you can take project management courses or design thinking courses. And what was really cool for me was that that they really walked me through each step of the design thinking from empathy to ideation. And I had a mentor along the way that could help me through that. And I think another thing that's very special about Global Changemakers is that after you take one of their courses, you get the opportunity to apply for seed funding and pilots as your initiative. So yeah, that would be my advice. Look for community and look for the programs that walk you through that step-by-step process of design thinking.

Emma: 15:38

Yeah. That's great advice. And we can share the links to Global Changemakers and some of the other communities. So anyone listening can find them and gain what you've gained from that. I think definitely having a mentor and someone just to chat the idea through with and stage it all sounds really helpful. So final question for you today is around working in sustainability in general. And a lot of the people I talk to, and I would say personally as well, can find it difficult to separate yourself from your work. And as we've sort of talked about before, have that time for your own activities and for yourself. And so do you find that your work is a big part of who you are and do you have ways in which you separate yourself from it? I suppose part of it is your meditation and your hiking and tennis as well. Any thoughts on that?

Maria: 16:35

Yeah, so of course that separation is important for our own health and wellbeing. And you get a lot of advice on trying to separate the two, but as weeks have passed, since our first conversation, I have seen how it's not necessary to separate it. I had a lot of conflict with it as well, because I thought that people put me in two boxes, either the Maria that's fun that works in finance that likes to party, or the Maria that is an activist and is very respected for her social impact work. And for a really long time I was like, okay, maybe I can merge the two or I just embraced either or, but as time has passed, I've understood that without either or I wouldn't be who I am today so I try to embrace the two. I also had a very insightful conversation with my partner the other day, where he was, I was a little insecure about how sometimes people just saw what I had to offer professionally. And then he said something like, yes you have, of course you have more than more to offer than who you are professionally, but your work is a combination of your values of what you love of what you spend for. So in a way, what I'm trying to say is that all those things that make me me translate to my project and I wouldn't be as passionate or as committed to it without those values and that love for my community or, or for education itself. So long story short, I do find it hard to separate the two. But what I've seen lately is that there's even, there's more to gain when you embrace them and try to bring them together.

Emma: 18:55

Yeah, that's a really nice answer. Yeah. I can definitely take something from that from myself. Thank you for that. And I suppose a final, final question is around"Stem in a Box". And where do you, where would you like to see the project going in the future? Maybe in three or five years time.

Maria: 19:16

Yeah, that's a very good question. So right now my brain is in a lot of places because after the pilot tests that we just ran, it became evident that it will be a bit hard to scale the tools as we have it now. There's a lot of manual labor involved. And especially the way we power them, it's not the most sustainable one. So I will say that in a year's time, I'm going to focus on developing that prototype and transitioning from an MVP to a go to market product. But speaking of the long-term vision, I will love to work with bigger international organizations like UNICEF or UNH CR and have them overtake the implementation of this and the Government as well, I think will play a very big role in ensuring that something like this is present in public and private schools. So I will say that my biggest dream and that period of time, will be building those partnerships with governments and international organizations to scale this project.

Emma: 20:34

Yeah. Great. Yeah, that sounds super and the best of luck. I think it's such an interesting project and it was really great to chat to you and learn a bit more about you and your project today. So thank you so much for coming in and chatting with me.

Maria: 20:51

Yes, my absolute pleasure. I cannot wait to see the final result of this project of yours, so best of luck as well.