FINCA’s newest senior leader on expanding economic opportunity and supporting women in a challenging moment for global development funding.
Much of the attention on international development today is focused on shrinking aid budgets and the pressures they place on organizations to do more with less. Lindsay Wallace sees something else as well: an opportunity to build smarter, more sustainable approaches that better serve the people at the center of the work.
Over two decades, she has dedicated her time to helping entrepreneurs across Africa access the capital and support they need to grow their businesses, first at the United Kingdom’s Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO), then at the Mastercard Foundation, and then at Mennonite Economic Development Associates (MEDA). In January 2026, she joined FINCA’s leadership team in a dual role as FINCA’s Managing Director of Institutional & Investment Capital and the Executive Director of FINCA Canada.
We sat down with Lindsay to talk about her path to FINCA, the changes facing the global development sector today, and the case for investing in women.
What sparked your interest in development work, and what keeps you motivated today?
In rural Nova Scotia, where I grew up, we only had three television channels. I remember one night watching a UNICEF special for the International Year of the Child with footage of children living in poverty. Those images stayed with me, and decades later, I still think about those kids. They sparked a curiosity from a very young age that has inspired my entire career: Why do some communities, economies, and businesses thrive while others struggle?
What keeps me motivated now is engaging directly with the people we serve and listening to their stories, their dreams, and their challenges. It’s important for those of us in the development sector to approach our work with empathy to make sure we truly understand and meet people’s unique needs and circumstances.
What drew you to FINCA?
I’d met FINCA customers and staff over the years, and I was always struck by the organization’s willingness to build what others assumed couldn’t change or wouldn’t be possible. FINCA started with a traditional group lending model and, over the years, has grown and adapted its products and services to truly meet the needs of millions of people living in poverty. Today, FINCA continues to transform, using technology to make personalized lending work at scale.
I was also drawn to how FINCA thinks beyond just giving credit. Training, market linkages, and digital tools all factor into the products FINCA builds, along with a real awareness and deep understanding of household dynamics and the barriers facing women and young people.
FINCA Canada brings this approach to life through Opportunity Rising: Increasing Economic Opportunities for Youth in Uganda and Tanzania, our five-year initiative funded by Global Affairs Canada, which helps young people — particularly young women — build the skills, financial capabilities, and connections they need to create sustainable livelihoods and businesses. This public investment is strengthened by the generosity of individual Canadians, whose support helps FINCA Canada extend our reach, innovate, and build on what government funding makes possible. At a time when development resources are under pressure, that combination of public and private Canadian support is critical to ensuring more young people can build a secure and prosperous future for themselves, their families, and their communities.
International aid budgets have contracted sharply. How is that reshaping the sector and how you think about your work?
It’s been a genuinely difficult period for the sector and for many organizations. At the same time, moments like this can create the conditions for meaningful change. The contraction in global funding is forcing providers, governments, and private funders to think differently about how capital is allocated, how programs are structured, and what long-term sustainability and growth really look like.
Donors, philanthropies, investors, and development finance institutions each have a distinct role to play. I believe we’re entering a period of greater experimentation and exploration around how sources of capital can work together more effectively. So, while it’s a challenging time, it’s also requiring each of us to be more creative in how we think about systemic barriers and how we arrive at solutions that truly work for people.
Why is investing in women and women-led businesses especially important right now?
There’s a moral case for investing in women and an economic case, and they point in the same direction. When women earn more, they put their income toward their families, their children’s schooling, and healthcare — all of which ultimately boosts broader economic growth.
Meanwhile, the systems that govern access to finance, business networks, and technology remain biased against women almost everywhere. Closing that gap pays off: When women do gain access, they consistently generate outsized impact. That’s exactly why we should be doubling down on this work when resources are tight, rather than pulling back.
FINCA’s Women’s Empowerment Loan in Uganda is one example of this approach in practice. Drawing on research showing that qualified women entrepreneurs often struggle to secure the levels of financing they need under traditional collateral-based risk-assessment methods, FINCA Uganda is now offering women right-sized, uncollateralized loans based on a thorough evaluation of their business performance and repayment capacity. The results are encouraging: demand is high, defaults are low, and the product is proving that women entrepreneurs are both a strong customer segment and a significant untapped opportunity.
The same pattern appears across the broader investment landscape. Funds focused on women and gender-diverse entrepreneurs often deliver strong performance, yet they continue to face barriers in attracting investment capital. At FINCA, we’re responding by intentionally backing women founders, who lead 42% of the companies in our impact investing portfolio.
It all points to the same conclusion: Any financial institution without a gender strategy is leaving money on the table.
What gives you hope for the future of the sector?
One shift I find genuinely encouraging is the move to more customer-demand-driven approaches. For years, development organizations designed solutions based on what they believed people needed. The demand element has always been in place, but the sector hasn’t always built around it as deliberately as we should have. That’s changing.
Increasingly, organizations are shaping product design around customers’ realities and priorities. At FINCA, we’re leaning into this shift by finding better ways to understand an individual’s actual cash flow, assets, and relationship with technology, then translating those insights into products that fit their everyday lives. It depends on listening as much as designing, which is why we do deep customer research and build solutions with local partners and staff who live in the communities they serve and who bring firsthand knowledge of customers’ needs and aspirations.
Ultimately, the closer we align our products with customer demand, the greater our ability to drive meaningful and lasting impact in their lives. There’s a lot to be hopeful about, and no shortage of opportunity ahead.
