Daniela Ancira

Daniela is the Co-Founder and CEO of La Cana, a social enterprise that seeks to create fair employment and provide skills training for incarcerated women, enabling them to earn an income away from crime through the creation of high-quality products. La Cana offers knitted dolls, embroidered décor, baby clothes, and manufacturing services for other designers and companies.

Each one of La Cana’s products is 100% handmade, original, and unique and tells the stories of the women that creates them. These stories raise awareness, generate empathy and help reduce the social stigma associated with incarceration. Beyond creating handmade products, La Cana seeks to address social issues such as the lack of opportunities, low levels of education, and circumstance that lead women to become incarcerated as the result of being an accessory to a crime committed by men. Prisons lack effective training and employment programs and due to the precarious conditions and services, do not help achieve social reintegration. La Cana offers solutions through job-trainings for women’s social and economic reintegration, mental health programs, and by advocating for the promotion and protection of incarcerated women’s labor rights. Daniela and La Cana envision a future where prisons are no longer places of punishment, but of opportunity, transforming detention into a time of learning and hope, rather than exclusion and suffering. Through their work, La Cana has witnessed how working with prisons creates more gender-equal, inclusive, peaceful and safer societies and sees their work as their vision for the future and the change they advocate for. Daniela is also an Ashoka Fellow and a member of the British Council – Future Leaders Connect, Women Leaders for the World, and the Global Good Fund. Before her work with La Cana, Daniela served as a Lawyer for Idheas, Strategic Litigation on Human Rights, and García Alcocer and Associates and was a visiting professional at the Due process of Law Foundation. She holds a Bachelor of Law from Anahuac University in Mexico City, a Masters in Human Rights and Democracy from FLACSO, Mexico, a leadership, communication and policy skills development certification from the University of Cambridge, a Digital Marketing Certificate from General Assembly in Chicago, and a Storytelling for Business certification from The University of Chicago.

What Daniela hopes to gain from the VV GROW Fellowship:

Daniela is excited to reflect on, learn about, and share her experiences with other women entrepreneurs. She hopes to build her skills in order to scale her business strategically and financially and hopes to bring greater awareness on the issues surrounding incarceration and gender in Mexico. She also hopes to create strategic alliances to replicate her model in as many prisons and countries as possible, positively impacting the lives of women who are currently invisible to society.

What Daniela can offer other fellows:

Daniela can offer connections with possible allies in Mexico, experience working with victims and vulnerable populations, and legal assistance/orientation in Human Rights and gender equality.

Connect with Daniela on Social Media:

Website: www.lacana.mx

LinkedIn (business): https://www.linkedin.com/company/18887286/admin/

LinkedIn (personal): https://www.linkedin.com/in/daniela-ancira-413770127/

Facebook (business): https://www.facebook.com/lacanamx

Facebook (personal): https://www.facebook.com/daniela.ancira.9/

Instagram (business): https://instagram.com/lacanamx

Instagram (personal): https://instagram.com/daniancira