Diana Quintero Giraldo

Sponsoring Rotary District: 4281
Worked in: Colombia, Malawi
Degrees from: Universidad Nacional de Colombia
Future plans: "I plan to work with governments and multilateral organizations in the social innovation field to link evidence-based innovations to a broader policy sphere to improve development opportunities for rural communities, peace efforts, and gender equality, especially in Latin America & Africa."

Diana Carolina Quintero is a business professional passionate about unleashing entrepreneurship power for building sustainable solutions for the most pressing social challenges, especially in access to healthcare and rural development.

Diana grew up in a Colombian rural family which gave her a deep understanding of the social gaps between rural and urban communities in her country. When she graduated from business school, she decided to use social business as a tool against inequity. As a result, she co-founded Bive, a social enterprise facilitating access to high-quality healthcare services for 21,000 low-income rural people by connecting them with affordable private healthcare providers and delivering health education, prevention, and early diagnosis services closer to rural communities.

She has volunteered with several organizations that promote social business philosophy, social innovation and entrepreneurship among young people, such as The Grameen Creative Lab, Yunus Social Business and Global Shapers Community at the World Economic Forum. Additionally, she served as a consultant for local NGOs, helping them create sustainable business models.

After 8 years leading her social organization, Diana moved to Malawi to work as Community Health Manager at mothers2mothers (m2m), an international NGO that empowers low-income women living with HIV to eradicate mother to child transmission of HIV in Africa, where she led organizational development and innovation projects and coordinated a partnership between m2m and the Ministry of Health to support the implementation of the National Community Health Strategy.

After completing the fellowship and her Masters Studies in International Development Policy at Duke University, Diana plans to scale up her work from the social entrepreneurship sphere to the public policy sphere to improve healthcare and development opportunities for rural communities in Colombia. From this perspective, she looks forward to exploring the relationship between social development conditions and peace and gaining knowledge and experience in cross-sectorial and multidimensional policy development and analysis to influence policy with a data-driven lens for making effective decisions, and ensure the country´s social reintegration required by the postconflict stage.

She is passionate about how to engage her experience in social innovation and entrepreneurship to enhance the role of the civic society and community-based organizations into Colombia policymaking processes towards the vision of a more inclusive country that promotes prosperity and well-being for all.