Puerto Rico's economic troubles offer opportunity for women

Ten years ago, Sheilla Torres Nieves left her home country of Puerto Rico to pursue her graduate degree in upstate New York.

Torres Nieves had chosen Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute to earn her doctorate in mechanical engineering. It was a long way from home, but she wasn’t scared.

With her husband, also an engineering student, the two created a renewable energy technology company around their studies. Last year they decided to relocate the startup and return to San Juan.

It might sound like a strange choice considering the economic calamity Puerto Rico is currently facing. But Torres Nieves, like many women, is taking advantage of the ways the island’s hardships benefit female business owners.

“There’s a huge sector here that has seen the crisis as an opportunity to reshape what used to be the motor of the economy,” Torres Nieves said.

Puerto Rico is floundering under immense debt, which reached $72 billion as of July. The government has spent more money in the last decade than it has taken in, and much of the debt is in the form of municipal bonds that the Puerto Rican government issued to cover revenue shortfalls and expenses when businesses started leaving the island around 2006.

Although the island is a U.S. territory, Puerto Rico can’t file for a court-arranged bankruptcy reorganization like cities such as Detroit have done in the past. Puerto Rico also can’t go to the International Monetary Fund for relief without being a sovereign nation, like Greece did under similar circumstances.

So it’s fallen to local entrepreneurs like Torres Nieves to help turn Puerto Rico’s economy around.

Melissa Wylie
Puerto Rico's economic troubles offer opportunity for women