Mi gente! 

Welcome back to a very special episode of Moneda Moves. It’s no secret that this year has been a challenging one for Latino-centered companies and business owners. From shifting economic tides to political uncertainty, the landscape is testing us—but also pushing us to innovate and build smarter.

As some of you may know, I had the honor of moderating a panel at SXSW all about the state of Latino startup hubs across the U.S.—and today, I’m thrilled to bring you that conversation as a live podcast episode!

This panel was packed with real talk and insight from powerhouse women in business and investing. We explored what it really looks like to build in this moment: the challenges, the strategies, and the money moves Latinos are making as we continue to chase generational wealth.

Yes, things feel uncertain right now. But uncertainty is also a call to strategize, not just survive. As a community, we can plan, pivot, and uplift one another.

Here’s one thing we do know: Latinos now hold the fifth-largest GDP in the U.S.—and Latinas are leading the charge in new business creation. The women on this panel are proof of what’s possible, and I can’t wait for you to hear their wisdom.

Here’s who joined us down in Austin in our LIVE podcast with our friends (who we did angel investing training with just last year!) at Inicio, impact-focused organization that supports and invests in early-stage Latino-led startups, working to close the capital gap and grow Latino entrepreneurship across the U.S:

🎤 Eneida Roman is the President & CEO of Amplify LatinX, a business organization advancing the American economy by championing leadership representation, economic mobility, and public policy solutions that consider the immense contributions of Latino Americans. Amplify LatinX has grown three-fold under her leadership as she continues expanding opportunities to advance its mission.

🎤 Jessica Salinas serves as Co-President of New Rising Ventures and New Media Ventures, impact investment funds supporting entrepreneurs who are innovating for social and political power, respectively. Previously, she was a partner at a global impact fund, the founding Social Impact Lead at Headspace, and the founding Director of the Stanford Latino Entrepreneurship Initiative Business Scaling Program.

🎤 Maria Jose Palacio is a fifth-generation Colombian coffee farmer with an unwavering passion for empowering her community. Born and raised in a celebrated coffee region of Colombia, Maria spent several years working in design in New York City before her heart led her back to her roots in 2016. Witnessing the struggles of her loved ones in Colombia to make a living through coffee farming, Maria knew she had to take action by co-founding Progeny Coffee. With a fierce commitment to uplifting others, Maria overcame numerous small business obstacles to co-create a thriving distribution platform that empowers coffee farmers and helps lift them out of poverty. Her innovative approach and dedication have not gone unnoticed, as she has been recognized on numerous esteemed lists, including Forbes Next 1000, Inc. Magazine's 100 Female Founders of 2020, Mujeres Imparables by Telemundo, and SFA's 12 under 35 Breakout Talent to Watch.

In this week’s episode, we’re tapping into the power and responsibility of Latino startup hubs.

Late last year, our friends at Inicio Ventures launched a landmark startup hub report spotlighting 18 Latino startup hubs across the U.S.—regions that are home to over 35 million Latinos and brimming with entrepreneurial potential.

These hubs are more than just business clusters—they’re centers of innovation, job creation, and economic momentum, led by Latino founders, funders, and ecosystem builders working to uplift their communities. And while the persistent capital gap is real—with Latino founders and funders each receiving less than 2% of startup funding—this report is less about what’s missing and more about what’s possible when we come together.

Our guests this week are living proof. They’ve been on the ground building companies, ecosystem building, and creating impact far beyond their bottom lines. As they grow, they’re also opening doors for others, building networks of support, and reimagining what inclusive growth looks like—region by region.

This episode is an invitation to think bigger, connect deeper, and imagine how we can unlock even more opportunity for Latino innovators across the country. Tap in and be part of the momentum.

Finding investment opportunities is a huge part of scaling small businesses into multimillion-dollar companies and Latino founders are more likely to seek external funding to scale their companies. In order to secure funding and scale their business, they need to know how to pitch themselves to investors that will take their businesses to the next level. That’s exactly why this week’s guest is an investing powerhouse with decades of experience growing small businesses and generating millions of dollars in revenue. 

Laura Maydon is the founder of Ascendo, a venture capital firm unlocking trillions of dollars of untapped opportunities nationwide that are currently overlooked. Ascendo invests in early-stage companies led by groundbreaking underrepresented founders who are using disruptive technologies that address the needs of growing demographic segments and that empower women, with a preference for Fintech, Edtech, Future of Work, Healthtech, and Enterprise Software.

Before founding Ascendo, Laura founded Endeavor Miami in 2013, the first US affiliate of the global entrepreneurial organization, pioneering Miami’s hub. During that time, Laura built a portfolio of more than 20 companies generating over $250 million in revenues, several with substantial exits. Prior to Endeavor, she held leadership positions at Visa and Panamco. Laura has strong Fintech, M&A, and PE backgrounds.

Laura brings some pretty incredible statistics that remind us just how powerful our cohort truly is. She says that the US Latino economy is leading in growth and that it represents 3.6 trillion GDP. Which would be equivalent to the 5th largest global economy if it were its own country. There is so much economic power in the Latino community - that includes both their spending power and their entrepreneurial growth. And this week, Laura is teaching us how to harness that power. 

In this week’s episode, we’re learning all that we can from Laura’s experience as a founder and investor who helped companies generate hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue. We’ll be diving into the entrepreneurial side of things including the specific challenges and opportunities that founders face in 2025, as well as emerging trends across sectors, and the rise of cross-border Latino businesses. Latino-owned businesses are seeing a remarkable amount of growth in the last few years and so we’ll dive into how that will impact the global economy and what our audience can do to capitalize on that growth.

Pulse check, mi gente: How are we? 

January was a very, very long month and came with multiple challenges for our community. And while these threats against ours and diverse communities across the board are flooding our newsfeeds, we must also seek and distribute resources that are available in these trying times. You can find information on immigrant rights here and updates on how the ACLU is responding here. 

This is a marathon, not a sprint. We must believe we will get through this together. If you feel moved to, this is a great time to get involved in your local and extended communities also being directly impacted by executive orders. Feel free to tag @monedamoves in any helpful posts or link resources in our Substack comments. 

We know that there is power in a community, especially at an economic level. Research shows that Latinos are the fastest-growing group of new business owners, we create new jobs with these businesses, and we have extremely strong purchasing power ($3.4 trillion to be exact). The broader Latino community and our smaller, more local communities have immense economic power that we can use to strengthen our communities. 

But in order to access that economic power, we have to work together and we have to strategize. By working together, we can be the beneficiaries of our own economic strength. We can do that by focusing on our communities and putting money into our own communities. Small businesses have gone viral via online platforms, and not only gained social popularity, but have had economic success through their customers’ support and by catering to the needs of their audience Latino-owned businesses offer real, tangible value to their consumers, but it can’t do that if no one knows they exist and economic support. 

This week’s guest is ensuring the world knows about incredible Latino-owned businesses. Danny Miró-Chinea is a fellow advocate for the U.S. Latino community, dedicated to creating opportunities for our communities and celebrating Latino excellence through entrepreneurship, storytelling, and community building. As the founder of Comprende, Danny’s platform is designed to uplift the U.S. Latino community by supporting Latino founders, amplifying their businesses, and sharing inspiring stories of impact. Comprende operates as a weekly newsletter and creative agency focused on the U.S. Latino demographic and is working on building a marketplace to connect consumers and companies with Latino-owned businesses.

Through Comprende's creative agency, Danny has collaborated with startups like Suma Wealth, equipping Latinos with financial tools and resources as well as influential organizations like the Latino Donor Collaborative, shaping the narrative around Latino contributions.

In this week’s episode, I sit down with Danny to talk  about the role of community building and mentorship in entrepreneurial spaces, the impact of AI on budding Latino-owned businesses, and how building a business can be used as a vehicle to affect positive social change. Latinos have an impressive economic power, and today, Danny’s going to teach us how to leverage that power as both a business owner and a consumer. 

Follow Danny on Instagram @comprendelatino and his website.

Follow Moneda Moves on Instagram: @MonedaMoves

Follow your host Lyanne Alfaro on Instagram: @LyanneAlfaro

Main podcast theme song from Premium Beat. Our music is from Epidemic Sound.

Podcast production for this episode was provided by Sarah Tulloch and her podcast production company, CCST.

A warm welcome back to our Moneda visionaries. In the first week of the Trump administration, several actions have deeply impacted our community, particularly with heightened immigration enforcement and the removal of Spanish-language resources from the White House website. These moves, coupled with the threat of large-scale deportations, DEI order, and the dismantling of environmental justice programs disproportionately affect Latinos.

At Moneda Moves, we understand the power of stories, and we are committed to reporting responsibly at the intersection of money and cultura, especially as it applies to our leading entrepreneurial population. The numbers don’t lie: Latinos accounted for 36% of all new businesses in 2023, nearly double their 19% representation in the U.S. population. Immigrant Latinos are more than twice as likely to start a net new business compared to the U.S.-born population.

The stories we tell matter, and more than ever, they will continue to shape our reality. That’s why we started this platform—to ensure that the builders in our communities are seen and heard, especially when our contributions to the American economy and society for a long time went unrecognized in national headlines. Fundamentally, Moneda Moves believes in the inherent value of our community, as humans, but also in critical mass, and in our culture. This commitment remains steadfast. 

In conversations with ecosystem builders who are working with underrepresented communities, it has been refreshing to know that we are not alone in this journey. A recent discussion reaffirmed the importance of staying informed, knowing our numbers which undeniably show the impact that we have together and how storytelling has the ability to create change. I highly recommend reading the 2023 State of Latino Entrepreneurship report by the Latino Business Action Network (LBAN) and Stanford Graduate School of Business. 

The future is ours to shape, and we will continue to ensure that our stories are told with integrity and respect.

This is why we are also joined today by Fernando Hurtado, a former manager of digital video for NBCUniversal Local and the host/producer of Bísness School. Bísness School is a podcast that highlights the stories of Latino-owned businesses and the fact that Latinos are the fastest-growing group of entrepreneurs in the United States. That series won a silver Signal Award in 2024. Fernando has recently launched The Hyphen, a YouTube channel that covers one of the fastest-growing demographics, U.S. Latinos, with deeply researched, visually rich stories.

 Beyond podcasting at major networks, Fernando was the lead producer on NBC’s My New Favorite Olympian podcast, which was named best sports podcast at the Cynopsis Sports Media Awards. 

He’s expanded his coverage in this arena to the Paris, Tokyo, and Beijing Olympics for NBCUniversal Local. Hurtado was named to Broadcasting + Cable's 40 Under 40 in 2023. Prior to NBC, Fernando was at ATTN: and Sinclair Broadcast Group as a producer and editor. He is a graduate of the University of Southern California and lives in Los Angeles. He is currently an adjunct instructor of visual journalism and multiplatform Olympic and Paralympic storytelling there. 

This journalist’s mission is to highlight Latino-owned businesses in English in order to reach younger bilingual audiences who are looking for positive representation in entrepreneurial spaces. In his effort to do so, he has produced over 20 episodes with successful Latino entrepreneurs, including Annie Leal, the owner of the $4M business, I Love Chamoy. It is no surprise that while living in Los Angeles, Fernando, like myself hails from Chicago, which is heavily influenced by Latino-run businesses, in neighborhoods from La Villita to Pilsen and Humboldt Park.

In addition to raising awareness about these businesses, he’s also sharing what’s working for them and what challenges they are facing in the entrepreneurial space so that other Latino entrepreneurs can learn from their stories. This week, Fernando shares how Latino entrepreneurs are using their stories to better market their products, why Latino businesses are seen as too niche or exclusive to other communities, and what trends he’s seeing in 2025. 

Follow Fernando on Instagram @byfernandoh and his website.

Follow the The Hyphen podcast on YouTube, and wherever you listen to podcasts. 

Follow the Bísness School podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and wherever you listen to podcasts. 

Follow Moneda Moves on Instagram: @MonedaMoves

Follow your host Lyanne Alfaro on Instagram: @LyanneAlfaro

Main podcast theme song from Premium Beat. Our music is from Epidemic Sound.

Podcast production for this episode was provided by Sarah Tulloch and her podcast production company, CCST.

Welcome back, Moneda Moves community. Following an eventful start to this week in news, we have another amazing journalist on the podcast, Cora Cervantes, who spoke with Latinos all last year leading up to the election which landed Trump in office. She’s here to share what she heard on the ground from Latinos, many of who are business owners, and their biggest concerns they want to see addressed – inclusive of economic issues. 

And before we dive in, we would be remiss to not acknowledge the way our Latino communities (plural) will be disproportionately targeted ahead of mass deportations set to start this week. As a platform that stands behind first builders, rewriting our narratives that exemplify our collective force, and tools for empowerment – we acknowledge how damaging the combination of rhetoric and actions on behalf of the new administration can and will be. During this time, we will be leaning into our personal community on the ground. We’ve also found Eliza Orlins, New York City public defender, and her explainers particularly helpful as of late.

As you know, this season we’re focusing on 2025 economic trends, how they affect our entrepreneurial community, and how our community will move the American economy. We have a memorable lineup for you and can’t wait to share the information and resources we’re producing this season.

As many of us know, 2024 was a tough year for small businesses. Average revenue was up, but so were expenses, according to Biz2Credit. Breaking down the numbers and net-net, profits were down: average monthly earnings for small businesses in the first 11 months of 2024 was about $86,000 - more than $60,000 lower than in 2023. Some entrepreneurs found themselves in the red in some cases, as this week’s guest independent journalist Cora reported. When interviewing working-class Latinos about their businesses in 2024, she found that people were struggling to keep up with the current economic climate, let alone improve their economic standing. It can also explain why Latinos voted with the economy among their top concerns.

This week’s guest, Cora, is an independent journalist based in Los Angeles. She covers politics, immigration, climate change, and race and culture with an equity lens. She has a network television and cable news production background at NBC News and MSNBC. She has produced digital stories for multimedia outlets, including NBC News, Al-Jazeera, Latino USA, palabra, High Country News, and Narratively. Cora is a graduate of Columbia University and holds a Master’s degree from New York University’s Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute. She currently serves as a board member of NAHJ’s Los Angeles Chapter.

Cora spent much of 2024 speaking with working-class Latinos about their businesses and how they perceive the economic environment in the United States. Small business owners are holding out hope that the economy will improve. But with the rising cost of goods eating away at their profits, they’re eager for change. As a result, in the 2024 election, several sources she spoke with voted with the hope that the new president would improve the economy and protect their businesses.

In this week’s episode, we sit down with Cora to talk about what she learned while covering Latino business owners and their votes, as well as the coverage we can expect to see more of within the Latino community in 2025. We're discussing everything from why some Latinos voted the way they did to how stricter immigration policies could affect our day-to-day lives. The Latino community is incredibly diverse, and our reasons for what we do and who we vote for are layered. By having boots on the ground via journalists who speak with working-class business owners, we gain a better understanding of what they’re experiencing and why.

No te lo quieres perder.

Follow Cora on Instagram: @cora_cervantes

Follow Moneda Moves on Instagram: @MonedaMoves

Follow your host Lyanne Alfaro on Instagram: @LyanneAlfaro

Main podcast theme song from Premium Beat. Our music is from Epidemic Sound.

Podcast production for this episode was provided by Sarah Tulloch and her podcast production company, CCST.

Mi gente, the first season of Moneda Moves is ready for launch! Thank you for joining us in the new year and our 180th installment of our Moneda Moves notitas. This season, we’re focusing on 2025 economic trends, how they affect our entrepreneurial community, and how our community will move the American economy. You can expect to hear from some incredible experts this season, including investors and national journalists—starting with this week’s guest.

It is more important than ever to pay mind to how Latinos are contributing to the economy—especially Latinos in the growing gig economy. Did you know that two in five Americans are part of the gig economy? For Latinos, an impressive 50 percent identify as independent workers, as shared by the Independent Women’s Forum. In kind, this week, we’re exploring how we tap into all that joint economic power we yield as well as the ins and outs of the growing gig economy.

Our guest is the award-winning journalist, educator, and host Tanzina Vega. Tanzina has led coverage of inequality at some of the world’s most influential organizations, including The Boston Globe, The New York Times, CNN, and New York Public Radio. In my eyes, Tanzina’s news coverage is the blueprint for reporting on money and race in the United States, as well as on money and inequality overall.

The gig economy is growing, and Latinos are increasingly participating in it, whether it’s on its own or in addition to a 9-to-5 job..s. Freelancing has its perks—you can work from home, set your own hours, and be your own boss. But it’s not the kind of work we were traditionally encouraged to pursue or the same rules that apply. In our conversation with Tanzina, we discover that the shift toward the gig economy may have been born out of necessity. We also discuss how critical it is for Latinos to know their contracts, what to watch out for, and how to advocate for their terms and worth.

This week, we’ll discuss how Latinos can tap into collective potential and how to navigate the gig economy. While freelancing can create new economic opportunities, it’s important to learn from established professionals like Tanzina, who have covered and experienced the gig economy firsthand. When new freelancers lack the knowledge to navigate contracts and negotiations, they could end up with predatory terms and unreasonable conditions. But with the right resources and advocating for their worth we can leverage the gig economy to continue to wealth build.

Can you believe it? We have arrived at the last installment of 2024 with Moneda Moves, and thank you for joining us this year! Throughout this season, we continued to cover top Latino entrepreneurs and leaders in the space looking to close capital gaps in our ecosystem, starting with my hometown, Chicago, the wider Midwest, and beyond.

This week, we’re coming back to our roots and talking about how Latino culture is influencing purchasing power. Little Village, a neighborhood in the southwest side of Chicago, is named the "Mexico of the Midwest" and generates over $900 million annually through its Latino-owned businesses. People come from all over the U.S. to experience the very specific type of nostalgia they can usually only find in Mexico. My immigrant parents sure did as I was growing up. It was here where we could find the botanica with medicinal herbs we were looking for or specific ingredients for a dinner with a taste of the motherland on Sunday afternoons. 

Customers come for the food, the street vendors, and the experience of feeling at home in a familiar place. This kind of success has the potential to be a blueprint for Latino communities all over the U.S., and this week’s guest is sharing how we can both protect this wealth and strengthen it.

Jennifer Aguilar is the Executive Director of the Little Village Chamber of Commerce, where she leads the mission to foster the growth and prosperity of businesses in Little Village while harnessing the community's rich cultural heritage to create fresh opportunities. In her role, Jennifer orchestrates the comprehensive planning, coordination, and execution of all facets of the Little Village Chamber of Commerce and Little Village Special Service Area #25. This includes staff management, operations, programs, projects, and services. With over a decade of experience, Jennifer has excelled in safeguarding corporate brand image and reputation through adept management of public and private stakeholder relationships.

Authenticity is at the heart of Little Village’s success. With traditional street vendors, quinceañeras, and over 100 restaurants, the corridor's success comes from knowing what its customers want. That includes products that are not only culturally comforting but also good for them. During her time at Nostro Queso, Jennifer found that customers prefer to buy organic, preservative-free products and are willing to pay higher prices for products in places like Little Village than they would in chain grocery stores. She says that customers who come to shop at Little Village would rather pay for traditionally made products than anything else. But when towns like Little Village become popular, large corporations often move in, which can negatively affect the community when not done responsibly.

In this week’s episode, Jen talks about what’s going well in Little Village’s economy and what we can do to protect it. $900 million is just the beginning. There is so much more that the people of Little Village can accomplish if given the opportunity. To make sure they do get that opportunity, Jen is working with the community to ensure they have the chance to own their spaces, limit the negative side effects of gentrification, and thrive in this generation and the next.

What’s up, Moneda Moves community?

No one should be left behind in our mission to achieve equal pay, even for Latinas. Yet, in 2024, the Latina pay gap widened for the first time in 20 years. That's impacting Latinas across the board and in most disparate ways our caregivers, mothers, farmworkers, and people working in hospitality.

My time reporting out of NYC reminds me of a time when I covered farmworkers and activists marching 200 miles to Albany to demand basic workers' rights, including collective bargaining, workers’ compensation, and unemployment benefits. This was finally granted in 2019 via the Farm Laborers Fair Labor Practices Act.

This week’s guest is Mónica Ramírez, an attorney, author, and activist. She is the founder of Justice for Migrant Women and co-founder of Alianza Nacional de Campesinas, The Latinx House, and Poderistas. Mónica has received numerous awards, including Harvard Kennedy School’s first Gender Equity Changemaker Award, Feminist Majority’s Global Women’s Rights Award, and the Smithsonian’s 2018 Ingenuity Award. She was named to Forbes Mexico’s 100 Most Powerful Women’s 2018 list, TIME Magazine’s TIME100 Next list in 2021, and the Association of Latino Professionals for America’s (ALPFA) Most Powerful Latinas list for 2024.

Now more than ever, it’s so important to be aware of the inequities our communities face at all levels and to call them out. If we are ever going to see the equal pay we deserve, we need to bring marginalized workers on this journey with us. That includes the farmworkers, janitors, and caretakers. At Moneda Moves, we applaud how our community is building generational wealth through entrepreneurship, leading companies, and career progression. But in our interview with Mónica, we discuss how the best way to move forward as a community and to close the wage gap is to respect individuals across industries that power our society in search of equity. There is no room for disparaging the same jobs that gave the next generation a leg up in the first place.

In this week’s episode, Mónica highlights why the pay gap is widening and what we can do to fix it. The fight for equal pay is a long road ahead, but we can start within our own communities. Latinas are making on average 51 cents on the dollar compared to our white, non-Hispanic colleagues. This pay gap is affecting Latinas in white-collar jobs and blue-collar alike. We have a lot of work to do to fix this, and Mónica is here to teach us how.

No te lo quieres perder.

Follow Mónica on Instagram: @activistmonicaramirez 

Follow Moneda Moves on Instagram: @MonedaMoves

Follow your host Lyanne Alfaro on Instagram: @LyanneAlfaro

Main podcast theme song from Premium Beat. Our music is from Epidemic Sound.

Podcast production for this episode was provided by Sarah Tulloch and her podcast production company, CCST.

Que tal, Moneda Moves community?

As both an employee and an entrepreneur in the financial industry, Juan knows just about everything there is to know about a business’s finances. He knew exactly what founders would need from a financial program like Lazo in order to grow their businesses, so he built it! Juan created a company that empowers Latino business owners through their finances and ensures they can scale their businesses.

Juan Manuel Barrero, a three-time entrepreneur, hails from Trenque Lauquen, a small town in Argentina, where he grew up in an accounting family business. Now based in Miami, he is building Lazo, a venture enabling him to make a significant social impact and transform his lifelong industry. His efforts benefit countless entrepreneurs while revolutionizing the sector.

Driven by the desire to create a substantial social impact, Juan aims to innovate and disrupt the CFO and legal tech SaaS industry. He recognizes the potential of AI, automation, and standardization in building scalable products. As the CEO of Lazo, he founded and leads the top gateway for Latin American startups in the U.S. Through partnerships with early-stage startups, Juan helps structure their data and provides a comprehensive VC-ready SaaS solution to address their finance, tax, legal, and investor relations needs.

Finances have always been a huge part of Juan’s life. His father was a CPA in a small town in Argentina, and he has been helping his father with the family business since he was a kid. As an adult, he also became a CPA and worked for major corporations for five years before becoming an entrepreneur and creating his own business, just like his father. His dad even became his first partner! It’s because of his experience in leadership positions and his community of Latinos in the financial industry that he created a program to give back to his community.

It hasn’t always been easy! From discovering his company was not sustainable to receiving hundreds of “no’s” from investors, he has experienced all the highs and lows of being a founder. He’s had to let go of businesses he wasn’t truly aligned with and find his true purpose before creating Lazo. Now, after years of recalibrating and redefining his purpose, Lazo is the number one pick for Latin American startups.

No te lo quieres perder.

Follow Juan on Instagram: @joinLazo

Follow Moneda Moves on Instagram: @MonedaMoves

Follow your host Lyanne Alfaro on Instagram: @LyanneAlfaro

Main podcast theme song from Premium Beat. Our music is from Epidemic Sound.

Podcast production for this episode was provided by Sarah Tulloch and her podcast production company, CCST.

Welcome back to another installment of Moneda Moves mi gente!

Diana Hernandez Wayne wants you to live your life intentionally; otherwise, what’s the point? I first met her at L’Attitude, the annual conference hosted by the $100 million fund (LAT VC) investing in Latino businesses. 

Diana is an absolute force, and I am so excited to have her on the show. She is a wealth of knowledge and feels like she’s lived a thousand lives! Diana learned early in her career that she would rather live an intentional life than a stagnant one. To do that, she had to learn how to let go of her scarcity mindset.

Diana Hernandez is an executive coach and consultant who advises corporate clients, venture funds, and founders on scaling their businesses. Diana has experience moderating and leading career advancement workshops and uses neuroscience-based practices to drive change. 

This week, we’re highlighting a cross-border trailblazer who is dedicated to bringing financial news in context for Spanish speakers in the United States. Our guest, Enrique Castro, is dedicated to bridging the financial education gap he’s noticed in Latino populations by sharing the knowledge he’s learned firsthand and creating a connection to current affairs. Each week, Enrique empowers his audience by sharing the latest financial news that impacts their families’ economies. He also shares inspiring stories of Hispanics in the United States who are transforming and strengthening the community. By advocating for his community on a local level and an international level, he is bringing financial literacy to those who need it most. 

Today we are honoring the Midwest by shining a light on Samara Hernandez, the Founding Partner of Chingona Ventures. Samara and her team are the perfect examples of the incredible talent living in our hometown of Chicago.

Chingona Ventures is an institutionally backed pre-seed stage fund focusing on investing in tech and tech-enabled companies across the U.S. The fund has $60MM in AUM and has made more than 40 investments across technology sectors in Financial, Food, Future of Work and Learning, and Health/Wellness. 

Samara is on the advisory boards for Coolwater, an organization to support the emerging manager community; Angeles Investors, an organization investing in early-stage startups led by Latinx founders; and Venture Forward, a non-profit working to get more diversity in the venture capital ecosystem.

She started her career at Goldman Sachs where she continually ranked in the top five for selling financial products, providing market insights, advising on portfolio construction, and consulting business practices. From there, she became an investor at Math Venture Partners across two funds where she led investment review, diligence, and execution.

While the Midwest can be overlooked by investors, we have a lot of hustle over here and with Samara’s help, business owners with marginalized backgrounds are starting to get the funding they need to do great things. This is especially important as founders with minority backgrounds find it hard to get funding.

In this week’s episode, Samara shares how her path to investing was a reaction to her environment. As a result, Chingona Ventures focuses on industries that are massively changing and founders whose backgrounds uniquely position them to create businesses in growth markets that are often overlooked. She and her team focus on areas in financial technology, the future of work, the future of learning, food technology, and health/wellness. Chingona Ventures invests in founders with a racial or ethnic minority with both cold and warm intros. She and her team have reviewed over 7,000 cold and warm inbound submissions, averaging five to six deals reviewed per day, at the time, invested in more than 40 different companies. That is such a high volume for such a lean team!
No te lo quires perder.

Mi gente, it’s your host Lyanne and your are listening to the last Moneda Moves episode of 2022! To close out the season, we are featuring a staple Latina brand near and dear to my heart that we’ve followed for years, the iconic apparel and accessories company Jen Zeano Designs. Its Texas-based founders and couple Jen and Vero Zeano are community-builders at their core having engaged their family, friends and locals in their business as they bootstrapped on their way to their historic debut in Target in 2022. A bit of background JZD and what it stands for: You may have run into their work via Jessica Alba or Jenna Ortega who have both worn their work, or their relatable, empowering and witty designs that echo phrases engrained in Latine culture (think Poderosa, Vibras Bonitas). Having created their renowned Latina Power design in 2014, and launching as an Etsy store, they were far from an overnight success, but what they did learn was how to lean on each other, harness the power of their community as they expanded their social media, sales as they quite literally prepared to land in a retailer like Target this year during Latinx Heritage Month.

We speak with the founder and CEO #WeAllGrow Latina, Ana Flores, a digital and IRL lifestyle community of impactful Latinas and Femme-Latines who support and uplift each other. Their goal? To increase visibility and grow our social and economic power. The community started in 2010 and since then has grown into a following of 253K and counting on Instagram and bringing people together in person from their Las Founders events out west to their annual summit which just made a return this year. I first attended their summit several years ago, where I had the opportunity to meet other Latinas growing businesses and spaces of their own from writers to life coaches and ecommerce.

We are deep in the fourth quarter of the year and while personally it’s a time of gratitude, it’s also a time when companies are knee deep in the annual budgeting process to set themselves up for the new year. So naturally, we're also thinking about building! What are our goals, visions and plans for the new year? These are the kinds of questions we encourage you to begin thinking about as well. Today, on Moneda Moves we have a guest who is a firsthand expert in this space to share her story and practical tips for our listeners creating their financial plans for 2023: Jen Hemphill, money expert and podcast host of Her Dinero Matters. Jen is an Accredited Financial Counselor and started her podcast to talk about the importance of learning your money story and how to build confidence in personal finances.