Latinas Get Down to Business

Maria de Lourdes Sobrino began her entrepreneurial journey alone in a cramped storefront, whipping up 300 cups of ready-to-eat gelatin by hand each day. She knew nothing about food processing, had no friends in business or banking, and faced ridicule from her well-heeled family members, who urged her to come home to Mexico City.

Sixteen years later, her Huntington Beach business and a sister company that makes frozen-fruit bars pull in $8 million a year. After designing her own production equipment and experimenting with recipes for longer shelf life, Sobrino ships her popular Mexican gelatina dessert and all-natural frozen confections to 14 states and three countries. She is building a 70,000-square-foot plant to handle growth.

Something else has changed. Although Sobrino battled her way to success alone, she now participates in a burgeoning sorority of Latina entrepreneurs. She recently helped form two local organizations to help other Latinas succeed in business. And she took her story to a Santa Ana middle school, inspiring gawkily written thank-you notes from students who more often see themselves reflected in dropout and teen-pregnancy statistics.

Sobrino’s status as boss of Lulu’s Dessert Factory, whose colorful trucks promise “More Fun for Your Spoon,” left many of the schoolgirls awe-struck, but it is a success they have a better chance than ever of emulating.

Studies show Latinas leading the nation in business formation, creating enterprises at more than four times the rate of the general population. Revenues and employment by Latina-owned businesses are growing even faster than their numbers. And while a majority fall in the service category, the number in construction, agriculture and wholesale trade has grown fastest of all--blasting a hole in gender and ethnic stereotypes.

Latinas are coming together in greater numbers to network, contracting with one another and offering free services to sister start-ups. National Latina organizations that never before focused on business are crafting entrepreneurship programs, with financial backing from big corporations. And across the country, women are stepping out from the shadows to seize leadership roles in Latino business organizations where they have long toiled as worker bees.

“There’s a momentum and it’s just going to continue to take off,” said Small Business Administration chief Aida Alvarez, who honored Latina entrepreneurs--Sobrino among them--at a recent Latin Business Assn. expo in Los Angeles, the nation’s Latino business capital.

“It’s no accident that I’m the administrator of the SBA at this point in time,” Alvarez said. “We are coming into our own.”

Latina entrepreneurs credit all this to changing gender roles, rising divorce rates, the entrepreneurial spirit of immigrants and a transformation of cultural values. Long ensconced in the role of behind-the-scenes family leader, Latinas are putting their tenacity, pride and ability to manage multiple tasks to work--in business.

“Before, Hispanic women had always put ourselves at the bottom of the totem pole in terms of our family,” said Anna Maria Arias, editor and publisher of Washington-based LatinaStyle magazine, which launched a seven-city business series for Latina entrepreneurs in June in Los Angeles. “Now, we want to take care of ourselves and, by taking care of ourselves, we’re taking care of our families.

“When it comes to household decisions--from what toothpaste they use to what car they drive and what vacations they take--it’s the woman” who makes them, Arias said. “That’s bleeding into the work environment. It’s a kind of rebirth of Hispanic women.”

Martha Diaz Askenazy, whose San Fernando-based Pueblo Contracting Services reinstalled the Angels Flight funicular railway in downtown Los Angeles, put it bluntly: “Why would I let someone else control my future when I know better?”

The trend reflects a gradual shift in Latino culture.

“For a long time, [Latinas] weren’t encouraged to go into business,” said Latin Business Assn. Chairman Hector Barreto. “Now . . . there’s not a stigma to it.”

Between 1987 and 1996, the number of Latina-owned businesses grew by 206%, compared with 47% for all businesses, according to a report by the National Foundation for Women Business Owners, a research group.

The report, released last year, showed a relatively low number of Latina-owned firms--382,400, or 5% of all women-owned businesses. But no group came close in growth rates, particularly in traditionally male-dominated fields: The number of Latina firms rose 428% in construction, 389% in agriculture and 338% in wholesale trade. Overall sales by Latina-owned enterprises grew by 534% and employment jumped 487%.

“It’s not only that we have more [Latina-owned] firms; they’re larger, more sophisticated and making a greater contribution to our economy,” said Sharon Hadary, executive director of the National Foundation for Women Business Owners.

Amid the snowballing enthusiasm are newfound Latina role models, whose many firsts are showcased in the Spanish-language media and recited like incantations by entrepreneurs and business advocates.

Among them: the SBA’s Alvarez--the first Latina to hold a Cabinet-level post--and Linda Alvarado, whose Denver-based Alvarado Construction Inc. is one of the country’s largest Latino-owned building companies. Alvarado is also the first Latina to own a piece of a Major League baseball franchise--the Colorado Rockies.

“When you market the successes of an individual like [Alvarado], it gives the average Hispanic female hope that . . . this is an option to take seriously,” said George Herrera, president and chief executive of the Washington-based U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, the country’s largest Latino business group. “[Latinas] will now take a risk that maybe they would not have taken before.”

Companies Begin to Take Notice

Corporations, in turn, are looking at Latina entrepreneurs as a market segment to be wooed.

Taking note of the recent growth statistics and her LatinaStyle subscribers--20% are entrepreneurs--Arias launched the business series with help from the SBA and Des Moines-based Principal Financial Group. The series offers training in areas such as financing, insurance and technology, along with networking opportunities and lighter fare, including fashion shows for Latina professionals.

American Express, too, is offering investment training and other services through events hosted by LatinaStyle, the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce and the National Council of Puerto Rican Women.

“The numbers are there, and they aren’t numbers that any one of us or any group is making up,” said Alvenia Rhea Albright, director of diverse business partnerships at American Express. “These are your new customers and if you don’t relate to them, you won’t be successful.”

Meanwhile, Latina organizations across the country are taking stock of their members’ rush to independence and redefining their missions. Business workshops offered last month by the National Council of Puerto Rican Women for the second year in a row were mobbed, said Lisa Torres, outgoing president, who left a billion-dollar company earlier this year to form her own executive search firm in Miami.

Mana (from hermana, or sister), a national Latina organization that develops community leaders through mentoring, added business workshops to its conferences two years ago. The group, based in Washington, is now overhauling all its programs to stress entrepreneurship, said president and CEO Elisa Sanchez.

To Arias, the Latina entrepreneurial movement is nothing short of “a sisterhood.” When she launched her magazine out of her Virginia condominium in 1994, other Latina entrepreneurs donated use of their phones and offices. Now, she’s returning the favor, offering advice to Los Angeles-based Latina Bride magazine, also Latina-owned.

Rodri Rodriguez didn’t have that kind of help when she left a record company 22 years ago to launch her own entertainment business. “I knew I was going to have to carry a bag of dynamite with me to break through the obstacles,” she said. “There weren’t ladders high enough to climb.”

She climbed anyway. Next summer, Studio City-based Rodri Entertainment Group celebrates its 10th anniversary as creator and producer of Mariachi USA, an annual extravaganza at the Hollywood Bowl. And last month Rodriguez launched a new venture--a multimedia mariachi show that runs every Saturday at the Reseda Country Club.

Male-Dominated Groups Are Changing

Along the way, she has cleared a path for other Latinas, spawning the first all-women’s mariachi group, contracting for publicity with Latina-owned Oralia Michel Marketing & Public Relations in Pasadena, and recently investing in an independent Latina producer’s project.

“You know why?” asked the resolute Rodriguez. “Because it wasn’t offered to me. If I can make the difference, I will do it.”

Hermana power is also transforming the complexion of key Latino-business organizations, long dominated by men. Seven women now sit on the 24-member board of the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, just one year after Latina members protested their lack of representation. And the Texas Assn. of Mexican American Chambers of Commerce, which oversees 30 chambers, in August elected Marilou Martinez Stevens as the first female chairperson in its 24-year history.

Only four of the Los Angeles-based Latin Business Assn.’s 15 board members are women, said Barreto, the group’s chairman. But the number seeking board positions and joining members’ ranks has increased dramatically, and two of the three top executives are women.

Bettina Duran didn’t want to wait. When she couldn’t find a Latino chamber close to her Azusa home-based business, she formed one. Now 18 months old, the San Gabriel Valley Hispanic Chamber of Commerce has 120 members. Duran, who launched her gift-basket business five years ago, attributes Latina entrepreneurial drive in part to fear of “[making] the same mistakes that our mothers did. We don’t want to be dependent. We don’t want to be stuck. We don’t want to be complacent or apathetic.”

It is an attitude that is apparently strengthening with each generation. High school dropout rates for Latinas declined from 55% to 33% between 1973 and 1996, said Anthony P. Carnevale, vice president for public leadership at Washington-based Educational Testing Service.

The number of Latinas holding bachelor’s degrees increased from 4% to 10% during those same years, and a quarter of Latinas now have some college education, Carnevale said.

The statistics, Carnevale said, indicate that there will be “substantial progress for Latina women over the next 10 years.”

In the political arena, meantime, the number of Latinas elected to office has risen nearly 400% since 1984, more than four times the rate for Latinos overall, according to the National Assn. of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials.

Latina activists welcome this progress, but they warn that there still are hurdles to overcome. High school dropout rates, while declining, are still more than triple those for whites, and teen pregnancy among Latinas remains a serious problem.

And while business owners like Maria Sobrino have begun to present the entrepreneurial path as an option to Latina schoolchildren, overall “young women . . . are not aware that this is happening,” said Mana’s Sanchez.

“Latinas have proved themselves. They’re starting businesses. They’re hiring people. Their companies are more profitable,” Sanchez said. “Yet we still find there is not that much interest on the part of corporations in contributing to the growth of Latinas.

“We try to say, ‘Look, this is a wasted resource. Look at what people can do when given half a chance. This is what you should be supporting.’ ”