‘Corporate America ignores my community’: Unlocking the $800 billion Hispanic business sector
This article was originally written by Cloey Callahan for Worklife and can be found on their website here.
Selig Center for Economic Growth data indicates that Hispanics, 20% of the U.S. population, are surpassing a purchasing power of $2.5 trillion, an amount greater than the GDPs of Russia, Canada or Italy.
That’s where the United States Hispanic Business Council comes in. USHBC is a non-profit organization that is the leading voice for the Hispanic business community. This council has found a variety of topics impacting the community, including the need for diversity and representation in business and media. Hispanics hold less than 4% of board seats.
“For 30 days, corporate America will celebrate my community, but for the remainder of the year, corporate America ignores my community,” said Javier Palomarez, president and CEO.
He’s trying to extend that synergy year-round, especially with the lens that DE&I is ultimately a smart business move, especially knowing how loyal this community is to certain brands and the value of this growing population as future consumers.
“When you look at some pockets of this nation right now, especially in the political arena, diversity is coming under attack,” said Palomarez. “It’s an early warning sign that we need to look at diversity from a different lens. Diversity for the sake of diversity is not the right approach. But it makes business sense.”
Diversity of thought is increasingly important and a reason why Palomarez encourages corporations to be proactive when it comes to hiring people from all different backgrounds. It’s giving yourself an honest assessment by asking questions like what markets are you serving today, what markets do you want to expand to, where are you underperforming, what does the consumer of the future look like, and so on.
“The answer to those basic questions should guide the diversity of the business,” said Palomarez. “Diversity should begin at the bottom with interns all the way up to the board of directors to include a healthy representation of Latinos at every level.”
USHBC advocates for 4.5 million companies that contribute a total of $800 billion to the economy. But besides this, they help companies get to where they need to be when it comes to diversity. For example, Palomarez had just gotten off a call with a well-known bank that didn’t have one Hispanic person on its board of directors. It was broken up into seven white people and three Black people.
“I made my thoughts known,” said Palomarez. “We set out to help and present the truth through collaboration, but there is a lot of work to do.”
Claudia M. Mirza agrees that the lack of representation in boardrooms is enough. She’s the co-founder and CEO of the Akorbi Group who led the company’s evolution from a small Spanish language translation platform to one of the world’s largest, woman-owned and U.S.-based language service providers with annual revenues of $55 million. She immigrated to the U.S. from Colombia in 1997, breaking away from her family’s path of working in agriculture and joining corporate instead. The El Paso, Texas-based company has around 700 employees.
“It makes a lot of sense to bring the perspectives of Latinos and understand diversity of thought in the boardroom,” said Mirza.
But she’s also happy to be based in America: “It’s a remarkable place for you to accomplish any dream you have.” And she, like many other Latinos, brings her entrepreneurial spirit with her.
“Latinos, especially Colombians, due to the lack of formal employment opportunities, are really great entrepreneurs because some people have to sell arepas, other people are selling clothes,” said Mirza. “We have all of this informal business in order to make a living. I didn’t know that type of survival could make us great entrepreneurs some day.”