Grameen America: Three women, three faces of financial inclusion

THE BRIEF

Grameen America has spent more than fifteen years lending over $4 billion to 200,000 women shut out of traditional banking.

Their next goal: $40 billion. But scaling a movement requires more than spreadsheets. Rooftop was brought in as part of Mastercard CFIG’s Further Together campaign to translate years of impact into stories that move donors, partners, and entrepreneurs to act.

THE CREATIVE

The answer to telling a story about microfinance was to not talk about microfinance at all. We built the work around three women – Jay Marie, an Afro-Latina creative entrepreneur in Jersey City; Felicia, an African American educator in Harlem; and Ilian, a Mexican retailer on East 116th Street. Across three days of filming in New York, we captured them in the spaces they had built. From that footage we created two interlocking pieces: an anthem-style brand film weaving their lives into a single narrative, and a three-part documentary series giving each woman her own short film.

THE IMPACT

The films now anchor Grameen America’s flagship campaign page and are being rolled out across donor pitches, private screenings, member gatherings, and social channels. Within the wider Further Together campaign, the work strengthens Mastercard CFIG’s case for inclusive growth by grounding it in three lives, not three statistics. For Grameen America, it gives the team a storytelling toolkit they can take into any room where $40 billion of ambition needs a human face.