ALINE PEZENTE: So, my name is Aline Pezente.
I was a Sloan Fellows '18 graduate student.
I was working with Anjali at an independent study
for farmer's economy and the usage of technology.
So, there is an ever increasing need to invest in agriculture.
And one of the biggest challenge for that
is the credit, access for affordable loans for farmers.
And we have been discussing with Anjali
about how we can use technology to solve this issue.
And what is the design of this technology
that we can use for farmers that they can
have better access to credit?
But not only that, how we can help the lenders to access
those farmers, which are mostly remote areas,
and they lack data.
So we have been working with Anjali
on thinking on as in these problems,
and also restructuring the right questions
that we should think about to find the proper solutions.
We thought it was more design thinking, and design
of thinking about the process, and how is the clients,
and how are--
not the clients, but the farmers' and the lenders'
perspective, with their lenses, what are the main questions
that they do while they are in the credit process?
And what are the status quo today--
what are the failures of these status quo?
And where we find the technologies
that have a compelling user case to deliver solutions
for lack of data and connection between farmers and lenders.
So it was a very systematic approach that we been opting
and how we think of all those technologies and innovation,
and deployed this to this problem.
So, I manage my time with weekly meetings with Anjali
for a period of time.
We set up very narrow deliverables.
And between the process, we were iterating
with some of the professors and some of the resources
that I needed.
And I took the discipline to having that in my schedule
so we could deliver and have fruitful discussions
every meeting that we had together.
And what I learned, though, in this process
with her was how to--
we systematically think or how we make--
we make the right questions.
And from the right questions, we start
to find the solutions which derives to the right questions.
And where do we find the resources?
And it's a system dynamic way of doing--
of formulating your problem statement,
which was very helpful for me in this process
of working in the project.
Anjali was super relevant to help us to think, OK,
to solve this for this challenge,
we need an expert in different areas.
Who are the experts?
And she connected us with those experts that eventually came
up and help us to contribute.
And also, she connected us with many interpreters and also
companies outside the scope of MIT.
For example, she connected us with a guy from India
from one of--
the largest solar panel companies
who also in certain sense is still in contact with us
on thinking about contribution, with Tata Center who also will
contribute with our research.
I think that that's the environment
that MIT brings to you.
It's quite unique, right, this possibility
that help us to connect with people
from different backgrounds.
Not only that, they are the experts
in the background in the world.
They are the most renowned faculty members, scientists.
They will add you a different perspective.
There is this ocean of think of different ideas,
different perspective that helps you to build up your own.
This is something that is unique at MIT.
Also the capacity of the connection,
right, because the world expands to you
and it opens because you're at MIT.
So there is nothing equal like that at all in any other place.
All the feedbacks that I was iterating
through the connections that we establish
through the process in this course were quite valuable.
Actually, every feedback, every iteration
shaped somehow the process of what we are doing now.
And that's the valuable thing of this course
is also to have the possibility to hear other opinions.
Not only-- if you stay on your own path,
you're blind to what is new or outside.
And that prevents you somehow to make innovation,
which is not the case here.
You see so many different things sometimes that you never
thought before.
And that changes.
And that improves what you are doing.
I guess the biggest challenge in this process
is still having the discipline to find a proper--
to having the discipline in this structure
to find a solution because there are so many elements
because you learn how to think.
And seeing the whole world and to try
to grasp the answers in a systematic and organized way
was, for me, a challenge in the beginning.
But I learned how to navigate that eventually later.
So it's now-- it's an interesting process
that you learned how to deal with so many variables
in making the puzzles to deliver to a whole-- a clear and
transparent picture.
Well, this project one, there is two branches of that.
One is a startup that I'm doing, which we already
are creating the fintech, which is exclusively
dedicated to the agricultural market, which
is the first in the market where we use data analytics.
And we designed the process in this course
to improve and deliver better financial solutions
to both lenders and farmers so we allow
them to have affordable loans.
And on top of that, there is also--
because this is so unique and so new in the world,
we are doing research with Anjali
and other professors, senior faculty members at MIT
with support from the data center
as well to study the economic behavior of farmers and lenders
with more data.
This data will help to solve for the problems of sustainable
financing.
Or in economy-- in conclusion, we don't know.
So that's one of the investigations
that we are doing.
That's one of the next challenge,
and again, some of the answers that we are trying
to find for this question.