8 Latinx Business and Finance Leaders

Takeaways: Latinx Contributions to Business and Finance

• The number of Latinx-owned businesses in the United States grew by 44% between 2018 and 2023, according to a 2025 Stanford University study.
• Top Latinx business industries include food and accommodation, professional services, the arts and real estate.
• Latinx people have shown national leadership in a wide array of businesses, including housing, credit unions, government, international food companies and more.

Throughout history and continuing today, Latinx business owners in the U.S. have contributed jobs and revenue to the national and global economy.

In 2025, Stanford University conducted a national survey and found that the number of Latinx-owned businesses in the U.S. grew by 44% to 465,202 between 2018 and 2023, while white ownership of businesses declined slightly.

The value of Latinx-produced goods and services reached $3.6 trillion in 2022, the Standford survey noted. Latinx-owned businesses saw a 36% increase in total revenue during that time, despite facing funding challenges from lack of access to capital.

As of 2022, Latinx and Hispanic people owned 7.9% of all U.S. businesses that employ at least one person, according to Brookings.

According to the Standford report, top Latinx industries include:

• Food and accommodation
• Professional services
• Construction and real estate
• Arts and entertainment
• Transportation

In a National Park Service piece titled, "Entrepreneurs from the Beginning: Latino Business & Commerce since the 16th Century," historian Geraldo L. Cadava highlights the significance of these business leaders and how their contributions are often overlooked:

"As a country, we have focused on the heated debates over Latin American labor migration, rather than the entrepreneurs who have created markets, played pivotal roles in the development of their communities, and emerged as political organizers and leaders."

Here are eight of the many Latinx business and finance leaders who influenced national and international business and policy and took risks to boldly pave the way for future generations.

1. Romana Acosta Bañuelos

Romana Acosta Bañuelos was born in Miami, Arizona, in 1925, but was deported to Mexico with her parents when she was 8 years old. Decades later, after facing tremendous challenges, she would become the U.S.'s first Latina treasurer.

According to the L.A. Times, she married at 15, and by 18, she had two sons.

She divorced, returned to the U.S. and taught herself English by reading comic books. She invested $500 in a small Los Angeles tortilla business that sold to local restaurants and stores. She bundled her two sons off to school, sold orders in the mornings, then delivered tortillas in the afternoons and evenings by bus.

This small business later became Ramona's Mexican Food Products, California's largest independent Mexican Food processing plant.

In 1964, Acosta Bañuelos and partners established the Pan American National Bank in East Los Angeles, California. A few years later, Acosta Bañuelos was appointed chairperson of the bank's board of directors.

2. Eliu E. Romero

Eliu E. Romero grew up in Taos County, New Mexico — and later returned to start one of the nation's first Hispanic-owned banks, Centinel Bank.

As Centinel bank's site explains, Romero was from the fourth generation of a Spanish-speaking family that relied on sheep herding and subsistence farming. He served in the U.S. Navy and the Merchant Marines and put himself through law school.

When Romero returned to Taos to practice law, he requested a $50 bank loan to buy furniture for his new law office. Despite his qualifications and education, he was turned down. Romero vowed to someday open a bank serving all people in the Taos community.

While working in his law practice, Romero applied for a state charter to open a bank but faced repeated denials until winning a federal review of his application, which was approved by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation.

Eliu and his wife, Elizabeth, convinced 300 Taos County residents to help them capitalize the bank, and on March 1, 1969, Centinel Bank of Taos opened for business. For decades forward, the bank became a family venture.

Today, Centinel Bank of Taos is one of only 145 FDIC-recognized minority banks in the country. It is listed in the "top 400 of the largest Hispanic-owned corporations in the United States," according to Centennial's website.

3. Margie Salazar

On Feb. 1, 2023, Margie Salazar was named the CEO of FirstLight Credit Union, becoming among the first Latina CEOs to lead a credit union with assets of more than one billion dollars, according to Inclusiv, a nonprofit dedicated to credit unions serving low-income communities.

"As a proud Latina from El Paso, I look forward to building upon our mission of improving lives so our members and community alike can achieve their dreams," Salazar said in an article on the FirstLight website.

Salazar grew up in El Paso and started working as a part-time teller at FirstLight as a 20-year-old student, she told Inclusiv in an interview. Impressed by the "people helping people" credit union philosophy, she committed to the credit union movement.

For the next 25 years, she worked her way up in FirstLight in a wide variety of roles, including branch manager and vice president before becoming CEO, beating out external national candidates.

"We know as members of the El Paso community and Hispanic culture that we have a gap in financial education, and many of us did not receive this growing up," she said in the interview with Inclusiv.

The credit union has developed products and financial educational opportunities tailored to the community, including bilingual first-time homebuyers' seminars.

In the interview, Salazar recognized the local immigrant population's unique needs. To show support, the credit union talks about finance education at local immigration ceremonies and, as of the 2023 interview, was working to develop a loan for citizenship legal fees.

4. Aida Alvarez

In 1997, Aida Alvarez became the first Hispanic woman and first person of Puerto Rican heritage to serve as a U.S. president's Cabinet member, when she was sworn in as the 20th administrator of the U.S. Small Business Administration. The SBA is the largest financial backer of small businesses in the U.S.

Before taking on the role, Alvarez attended Harvard University, then worked in journalism, investment banking, financial regulation and housing. In 1993, she was nominated by former President Bill Clinton to establish financial regulation and oversight of government-chartered corporations Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which support the secondary mortgage market.

5. Geisha Williams

Geisha Williams' family immigrated from Cuba; for years, Williams served as the family's primary translator, according to advocacy organization Lean In. Many years later, she began her career in 1983 at Florida Power & Light Company, where she worked in customer service, marketing, external affairs, and electric operations.

She accumulated more than three decades of experience in the energy industry. In 2017, Williams became the first Latina CEO of a Fortune 200 company at PG&E Corporation, the natural gas and electric energy company.

Only 1% of C-suite executives are Latina, one of the least-represented groups in corporate America. Only three Latinas have been CEOs of Fortune 500 companies, according to Lean In.

At PG&E, Williams championed renewables integration, grid modernization and smart grid technologies. Since retirement, Williams has served on the boards of several energy, telecom and infrastructure industries, including Siemens Energy AG, Artera Services, Osmose Utilities Services and Meritage Homes Board of Directors, the nation's fifth-largest public homebuilder.

6. Roberto C. Goizueta

In 1984, Cuban-American Roberto C. Goizueta was named the first Hispanic CEO of a Fortune 500 company. It was the pinnacle of success for Goizueta, who worked his way up through Coca-Cola company and led from a very young age.

Goizueta was born in Havana, Cuba, in 1931. He was educated in Cuba and the U.S., eventually majoring in chemical engineering at Yale University. In 1954, he began working at Coca-Cola in Havana, Cuba, as an entry-level chemist.

After the Cuban revolution, Goizueta fled with his wife and their three young children to the U.S., where he continued working at Coca-Cola in Atlanta, Georgia. Goizueta and his wife became U.S. citizens in 1969.

Goizueta then became the company's youngest vice-president at age 35, quickly moving up to become Coca-Cola's youngest-ever chairman and CEO.

A risk-taker, Goizueta was responsible for introducing Diet Coke, Cherry Coke and the controversial New Coke, new advertising slogans and a global expansion. He also started two nonprofits — the Coca-Cola Foundation and the Goizueta Foundation, and worked with Coca-Cola until he died in 1997.

"My story boils down to the uniquely American idea that a young immigrant could come to this country with nothing but a good education and a job as a chemist, and 30 years later have the opportunity to lead one of the world's best-known enterprises," said Roberto C. Goizueta in a Minority Business Review profile.

7. Priscilla Almodovar

Priscilla Amodovar's family moved from Puerto Rico to Brooklyn in the 1950s, where they later bought a home. In 2022, Almodovar became CEO of Fannie Mae, a leading government-sponsored provider of mortgage financing. As such, she's Fannie Mae's first female CEO and first Latina CEO.

Before joining Fannie Mae, Priscilla spent 30 years in finance, banking, and real estate, with a focus on affordable housing investing and supply, as well as international project finance. Her resume spanned from JP Morgan Chase to a nonprofit affordable housing entity to New York state housing agencies.

8. Angel Manuel Ramos Torres

Ángel Manuel Ramos Torres was born in 1902 in Manati, Puerto Rico, and was the founder of the global and U.S. hit Spanish-language station Telemundo. Telemundo today is one of the largest Spanish-language networks globally.

In 1924 at age 22, Torres became the publisher of El Mundo, Puerto Rico's largest daily newspaper. By 1944, he was the newspaper's sole owner. In 1954, he established Puerto Rico's first TV station, WKAQ-TV, which pioneered the development of Spanish-language TV stations around the world.

"The station's program popularity in Puerto Rico and the need for increased Spanish-language communication in the U.S. encouraged investors to take a chance on building Spanish-language stations and networks," according to a 2017 Smithsonian exhibit on Telemundo.

Telemundo, the parent company, soon owned local Spanish-language stations in Los Angeles, Miami-Fort Lauderdale, and New York. In 1960, Ramos died at home in Harrison, New York.

Yet his legacy continued. What's known today as the "Telemundo Network" is headquartered in Miami, owning more than a dozen stations.

"Telemundo has a deep and long-standing commitment to celebrate, promote and preserve Hispanic culture," said Mónica Gil, EVP, Corporate Affairs, NBCUniversal Telemundo Enterprises, in an interview conducted for the Smithsonian exhibit.

Related Content