Grace Badilla Lopez

Federation of Savings and Credit Cooperatives of Costa Rica (FEDEAC R.L.)

Grace Badilla López was born in Costa Rica, in Jicaral de Puntarenas, a rural town in the Central Pacific. She is the eldest of six siblings. She attended secondary school at an Agricultural Technical College where her life was marked by cooperatives, belonging to a student cooperative at school. At the age of 18, she went to work and study in the capital, San José, where she graduated with a degree in Public Accounting and Educational Administration.

In addition, she specialized in Public Administration and obtained her master's degree with an emphasis in Cooperative Administration at the University of Costa Rica. Passionate about education and accounting, in her working life she works as a professor in Technical Colleges in the country and teaches classes at the National Technical University.

During her career of more than 20 years in the Financial Cooperative Sector, in 2002 she began as secretary of the Surveillance Committee of the National Cooperative of Educators, Coopenae R. L., the largest savings and credit cooperative in the country; and, later, she was elected as a proprietary member of the Board of Directors. In 2012, she was appointed president of the Board of Directors, where she became the first woman to hold that position, which she currently holds. Likewise, in 2014 and to date, she is the president of the Board of Directors of the Federation of Savings and Credit Cooperatives of Costa Rica (FEDEAC R.L.), an organization that represents and defends the Savings and Credit Cooperative Sector of Costa Rica.

Her cooperative leadership, and her vision of positioning and strengthening the Savings and Credit Cooperative Sector, allow her to make the decision to belong to the National Board of Directors of Banco Popular y de Desarrollo Comunal as director in 2018 and in 2020 she assumed the presidency for a period of two years. One of her challenges is to promote the empowerment of women, for which she founded the Transcend International Association, where she currently holds the presidency. In addition, it has managed to build a support network to undertake projects that are transformed into contributing to a better society. She enjoys life to the fullest, especially in the company of her three children and two grandchildren.