‘Network With Soul’ Encourages Career Women

“I began to notice that this is not your usual network,” remarked Rita M. Rodriguez after spending a day at the conference in Los Angeles of the National Network of Hispanic Women.

Rodriguez ought to know. As a presidential appointee and director of the Export-Import Bank of the United States, she’s had plenty of opportunity to rub elbows in the right circles.

But Rodriguez was only one of more than 500 Latinas who came to realize at some point during the three days of workshops, award banquets, receptions and informal meetings that, as she phrased it, “This is a network with a soul.”

If the conference--officially titled the Third National Roundtable for Hispanic Business and Corporate Women--was long on soul, it certainly did not fall short in substance.

The theme, “Hispana Leadership: In Step With the Future,” was personified by the women who gathered at the Biltmore Hotel June 22-24. Among many accomplished leaders in their fields were the first Latina college president, the city treasurer of Chicago, a former secretary of state of New Mexico and prominent women business executives.

More than 20 workshops were offered that, as one keynote speaker put it, “read like a course curriculum for an M.B.A.” Entrepreneurs could attend small sessions with experts on creative financing or Pacific Rim trading. Managerial workshop subjects included government lobbying and shattering the glass ceiling, the invisible barrier that has kept women and minorities from the tops of corporate hierarchies. Dozens of booths were abuzz with recruiters from government and industry.

Those who came to hone professional skills and make concrete business contacts, such as Virginia Garcia, were not disappointed. Garcia, 39, is president of Garcia Advertising and Communications in San Francisco. “Outstanding” is how she described the workshop she attended on business financing.

A four-year member of the organization, Garcia credits the group with motivating her to start her own business. The networking has proved invaluable, she said. “I’ve met key people who are decision-makers in my line of work. Either I’ve sought them out or they’ve contacted me for business.”

But Garcia also alluded to the spirit of the group, saying, “It’s extraordinary to find so much talent, caring and giving in one place.”

Although the meeting rooms resounded with professional success stories, words such as “inspiring” and “motivating” were heard as often as “profitability” and “promotion.” Perhaps that was because the heroines of these stories are acutely conscious of their roots--and the responsibility they confer.

Network board member Louise Ano Nuevo Kerr, 50, now associate vice chancellor of the University of Illinois, Chicago, was a migrant farm worker from Watsonville, Calif.

Maria Elena Ibanez, 35, who two years ago sold her computer marketing firm to a corporate giant for several million dollars, came to Miami alone at age 18 from Barranquilla, Colombia, not speaking a word of English.

Nancy Gutierrez, human resources director at Pacific Bell and acting executive director of the network, started out nearly 30 years ago working as a telephone operator.

“This is a group of women who . . . have made it. But we aren’t queen bees,” Garcia said. “We want to encourage the younger women and say, ‘We’ll help you. We don’t want you to go without the support we didn’t have.’ ”

To put its caring spirit into action, the network supports young Latinas through its Transitions program, which brought 87 college students to the conference and created workshops on career planning for them. All had extensive contact with role models and 10 were formally paired with a mentor.

Amalia Ochoa, a senior at UC Irvine, said the entire round table experience was excellent. “You don’t realize how much potential you have until you see other people who are already doing things” she said.

“You reach a certain point in college when you start doubting yourself and whether you can make it,” she continued. “The conference helped me put myself back on track.”

The Transitions program reemphasizes the academic origins of the network, which began as an association of university women, said chairwoman Celia Torres. Nine years ago, Sylvia L. Castillo, then an administrator at Stanford, launched the organization as Hispanic Women in Higher Education.

Today, the broader-based organization maintains a national resume bank and resource center in Los Angeles and publishes Intercambios, a quarterly magazine. It also sponsors biennial round tables, partially underwritten by corporations, at which national awards are presented in community and government service, higher education and business.

Award winners reflected the community-conscious spirit of the network. Rita Rodriguez, in accepting the government service award, voiced her concern about the 50% of Latinos who don’t make it through the educational system. Juliet Villareal Garcia, the nation’s first Latina college president (of Texas Southmost College) and education award winner, cautioned, “We must be mindful of the responsibility that goes along with being among the first.”

That sense of responsibility was driven home throughout the conference, never more eloquently than by Faustina Solis, professor of community medicine at UC San Diego School of Medicine. She brought many participants to tears during a luncheon keynote address. Solis admonished Latinas not to become like some members of ethnic minorities who achieve personal success and then hang “lace curtains” in their homes, always looking out on the world through the symbol--and barrier--of their success.

UCLA freshman Nancy Flores, in accepting a national student leadership award, seemed to take the exhortation to heart. She told the awards banquet audience about a short story she had studied in school, which compared the difficulty of a Chicana’s obtaining a higher education to that of passing through the eye of a needle.

Her interpretation of the meaning of the story, and the meaning of the National Network of Hispanic Women, Flores said, was: “When you slide through the eye of the needle, grab an hermana (sister) by the hand and take her with you.”