Exclusive Q&A with Talya Bosch, Senior Director of Social Ventures, Western Union

Earlier this month, I attended the conference "The Role of Business in Empowering Women" at the United Nations. Hosted by the US Chamber of Commerce Business Civic Leadership Center (BCLC) and the United Nations Office for Partnerships in partnership with the Center for Women in Business, the conference was part of the many events taking place at the UN on International Women's Day.

One of the attendees was Talya Bosch, who was there to moderate a panel discussion entitled "Women and Financial Inclusion." The panel included Jane Wurward, founder and owner of Dermalogica; Thomas Stelzer, Assistant Secretary-General for Policy Coordination and Inter-Agency Affairs at the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs; Pam Flaherty, CEO of Citi Foundation; and Nadereh Chamlou, Senior Advisor to the Chief Economist of Middle East and North Africa, World Bank.

As the Senior Director of Social Ventures at Western Union, Talya is leading cross-sector collaborations to help create financial opportunities for women and other underserved groups around the world. I had a chance to ask her some questions about the conference and how women, migration, remittances, mobile money and prepaid cards fit into the overall theme of financial inclusion.

What ideas and concerns rose to the top of your panel discussion at the BCLC conference?

Beyond the need to focus on gender, Nadereh Chamlou said that some of the patterns that the World Bank is seeing are related to the "missing middle," the small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) that are too big to access microloans but too small to access financial vehicles reserved for large businesses and which are largely missing in developing countries.

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Reynard is a Justmeans staff writer for Sustainable Finance and Corporate Social Responsibility. A former media executive with 15 years experience in the private and non-profit sectors, Reynard is the co-founder of MomenTech, a New York-based experimental production studio that explores transnational progressivism, neo-nomadism, post-humanism and futurism. He is also author of the blog 13.7 Billion Years, covering cosmology, biodiversity, animal welfare, conservation and ethical consumption. He is currently developing the Underground Desert Living Unit (UDLU), a sustainable single-family dwelling envisioned as a potential adaptation response to the future loss of human habitat due to the effects of anthropogenic climate change. Reynard is also a contributing author of "Biomes and Ecosystems," a comprehensive reference encyclopedia of the Earth's key biological and geographic classifications, to be published by Salem Press in 2013.