Andrea Grobocopatel is a businesswoman and philanthropist who advocates for women’s empowerment, primarily through a business and financial lens. At a young age, she became the co-founder of Los Grobo Holding, an agribusiness conglomerate that evolved from a small SME into a role-model South American enterprise. By the time Andrea stepped away from the firm in 2016, it had grown to 1,000 workers and annual revenues of nearly $ 800 million. Andrea has held many leadership positions in the firm, including Chief Financial Officer, Board Member, and Board Vice Chair. Her time at the company showed her the lack of diversity in the field and the challenges women face in the professional sphere to have their voices heard at high levels of decision-making. Her experience fueled her to uplift, empower, and educate women who share her drive to make their professional dreams a reality and seek to invest in not only themselves, but their ideas and what they can bring to companies.

Currently, she is the founder and shareholder of several enterprises, President of Ampatel (agricultural and livestock company), and Resiliencia SGR, which provides financial services for entrepreneurs and SMEs, especially those owned by women. Grobocopatel is also president and founder of Fundación FLOR, a network that promotes the training and transformation of responsible leaders to build sustainable, diverse, inclusive, and equitable organizations. Its programs are tailored towards rural women, female entrepreneurs, family businesses, and any and all women who seek to further their careers. Fundacion FLOR has transformed more than 150,000 leaders all over the Global South and 600 organizations. Among them, FLOR has trained more than 600 women to be directors and 500 entrepreneurs to become businesswomen.

Andrea has been working on promoting gender equality for more than two decades. Her concerns about the gender gap in labor and economic inclusion have led her to actively advocate for women’s autonomy and increasing the visibility of their unequal participation in domestic work. Grobocopatel has been an advisor for decision-makers, companies, and governments on the impact of the care economy on women’s ability to thrive professionally.

Her career as a gender equality advocate led her to be the G20 Empower Representative, the G20 Alliance for Empowerment and Progression of Women’s Economic Representation. She was Co-Chair of the W20 and now serves as a delegate for the W20’s International Dialogue Process. In the international sphere, she has also participated in the WEF (World Economic Forum), the CSW (Commission on the Status of Women), the Ibero-American Summit organized by SEGIB (Ibero-American General Secretariat), and other international forums.

She has been recognized as an ‘Innovative Leader of the Year’ by the Women in Agribusiness Summit 2014, was named in Apolitical’s top 100 most influential people in gender policy in 2018, and was the first woman to join the Rotary Club Buenos Aires founded in 1919. Grobopatel was featured by IFC as one of 20 extraordinary female business leaders from emerging and frontier markets from around the world in 2019. Grobocopatel holds a bachelor’s degree in Economics from the University of Buenos Aires, and she also has a Cochran Fellowship. She is married, a mother of four, and a grandmother of one.