By Rose Fry

strong woman swimming against the tide of tradition, Ana Cecilia Reyes Esparza, CFA, just became the first woman in Mexico to earn a CFA charter. Because of that achievement, she has received a good bit of attention that she's happy to take advantage of for one purpose:

“This has given me a chance to talk about the importance of the CFA designation,” she says. “I am trying to convince a lot of women friends that I know that are very capable, very professional, to pursue the charter. I feel responsible of showing that it is possible to do this.”

However, her friends have yet to agree. Their reluctance comes from a longstanding belief that women should not take part in financial matters, including any banking or investment decisions.

“For women here in Mexico, the profession is perceived as a male profession. Women are beginning to have a part of this,” she says. “Of course things are changing, although there's still a lot to do. I think that, with effort, it is going to be for us.”

Fortunately for Reyes Esparza, other influences, such as family traditions, were more compelling. Her family has a strong interest in numbers and a passion for education that brooks no interference. Both her father and her mother were CPAs; two of her brothers are in investments; and her sister is an economist. Talk around the dinner table so often revolved around numbers that it seemed natural for her to explore such interesting territory despite cultural norms. Their family custom to pursue knowledge was far more powerful than mere convention.

Her mother in particular set the pattern for her. By choosing accounting as a profession decades ago, long before the feminist movement reached Mexico, her mother showed her that the most important factor is what you're capable of, not what society thinks you should attempt.

“In those days, at least for my mother, it was not very common for a professional career for women,” she says. “So, I have a very strong example of pursuing something that you want.”

What Reyes Esparza wanted was eventually the CFA Program.

“I went to make a sort of investigation about the CFA Program, and I decided it was the program I would like to pursue. It had a whole knowledge that I needed to obtain.”

Her pursuit of the CFA charter came several years into a thriving career in finance and reflects her steady and measured progress toward increasing her bank of knowledge and diversifying her experience.

“I decided it was a good moment after a master's degree to have some designation for a position of authority, investment professional authority,” she says. “It (the CFA Program) has given me a more profound understanding of the markets—an issue that has supported my life since my college years.”

Reyes Esparza was drawn to finance during her undergraduate studies in business administration at Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México (ITAM). Having witnessed several economic crises in Mexico and in Latin America as a whole, she became captivated with market behavior—why and how it reacts to various forces. And so she followed her curiosity, deciding to major in finance rather than the more socially acceptable marketing that she considered first.

She went on to complete a master's degree in international management, studying in France during the construction of the European Economic Community and in Mexico during the NAFTA agreement negotiations. Class discussions centered around these watershed moments as they unfolded. She pushed the boundaries of her capabilities at every turn as her own career took shape, working her way up from the fundamentals—recommending factoring strategies for individual companies to the sophisticated—designing credit risk rating models for a large bank.

Reyes Esparza is currently serving as risk management director at Grupo Financiero Ve por Más in Mexico City. It is her greatest challenge yet, and her head is still filled with tantalizing ideas. With the responsibility to help position new banks during a time when the Mexican banking industry is branching out to include smaller, national banks, she says that earning a CFA charter provided a powerful resource for her.

“I feel that I have already benefited in so many ways about the charter,” she declares. “Having the whole body of knowledge has given me a more competitive advantage. I am sure about it. I can do my work better each day. And I am quite convinced that the bank is going to benefit from this effort.”

“But of course, the personal experience and benefits are more profound,” she continues. “Achieving it has really taught me a lesson, a lifetime lesson, because even though you fail, even though you have poor and good days, if you put your mind on something, you are going to succeed, you are going to achieve it. So, it's just a matter of will, of trying to do something you are convinced of and pursuing it.”

And although her female friends still say, “Oh no, that's too tough for me. I am not going to be able to achieve this,” she counters with, “I think that has to change. I'm convinced women can do anything they want.”

“It's just trying to get rid of those old ideas of doing things—and being convinced that we can be part of the industry as well. I think I learned that from my mother—that you are capable of doing this kind of thing. Whatever you want, do not doubt your abilities. Find a way to overcome your limitations and try to achieve something.”

She concludes, “My view of the process is that achieving the designation is only the final part of a very rich experience in which I had to put a lot of effort in order to succeed. At the end, the reward is very high.”