Vanguard University unveils Patty Arvielo School of Business and Management

Patty Arvielo’s mother, an immigrant from Mexico, cleaned houses while Patty and her siblings were growing up.

It was a middle-class upbringing in South Gate and La Mirada, and Patty never looked down on that profession.

“I very admired her because she had her own business,” Patty Arvielo said. “She cleaned houses for kids I went to school with and their families. I just looked at her as entrepreneurial and in control of her destiny. She didn’t have an 8 to 5, and she could be home when we were home from school.”

That entrepreneurial spirit served Patty well, too. Family members saw it in her. When she was 6, her grandmother told her in Spanish, “Tu me vas a comprar una casa” — “You’re going to buy me a house.”

She started working when she was 10, cleaning real estate offices with her mom at night and also hustling at the local swap meet. Hard work is Patty Arvielo’s story, and what a story it has become.

Vanguard University announced the unveiling of the Patty Arvielo School of Business and Management with a ceremony on campus on April 20. Vanguard is now home to the first business school in the country to be named after a Latina.

The event was a surprise for Patty put together by the school and her husband, Rick, with whom she co-founded Tustin-based New American Funding in 2003 and built it into a powerhouse in the mortgage industry. Patty is the company’s chief executive officer.

Patty and Rick recently sponsored the largest academic donation in Vanguard’s 103-year history, which will allow Vanguard to create endowed scholarships, launch an MBA program, hire a founding dean and expand opportunities for first-generation students.

Patty Arvielo looks at her husband Rick during a ceremony on the campus of Vanguard University on April 20.

(Courtesy of Dana Attebery / Vanguard University)

“This kind of gift and this kind of partnership provides two things that are perfect for a university — resources and a role model,” Vanguard President Michael Beals said. “Patty’s heart, her work, her experience, her past, her future is really about inspiring business leaders, specifically Latina business leaders, to go for their dreams.”

The Arvielos asked that the amount of the donation be kept confidential.

Hundreds of students, faculty and staff greeted her on campus that day, as did family and friends. The self-made entrepreneur, multimillionaire and mentor said it was the first time in her life that she’s been surprised.

“I’m usually the giver, I’m usually the one planning events to surprise others,” Arvielo said. “It was overwhelming. I looked around and all my best friends were there, my family. Then I see all these kids, and I could immediately see that a large percentage of them were Latina, so I knew exactly why I was there.”

Arvielo, 58, said she struggled with impostor syndrome until recent years, thinking she was just lucky and not smart. But she’s overcome that, and she remains involved in plenty of philanthropic causes.

She sits on the board of the Center of Public Leadership at the Harvard Kennedy School, and is a 50% partner in WeAllGrow Latina, the most established lifestyle community of Latina women who have made an impact.

“There’s such a lack of Latino business leaders that are put out in the media and the news,” Arvielo said. “We talk about [Jennifer Lopez] and those type of people, but there’s really not a specific businessperson for us to emulate and see ourselves in. I enjoy giving back to my community and doing specifically for Latinas what I didn’t have. I really didn’t have anybody to look up to.”

Patty Arvielo is the first Latina to have a business school named after her in the United States.

(Courtesy of Dana Attebery / Vanguard University)

Vanguard was designated as a Hispanic-Serving Institution by the U.S. Dept. of Education in 2015. Today, nearly half of the school’s undergraduate population — 47% — is Latino, and 68% are students of color.

Business is the largest major at the private Christian university. At the surprise announcement of the Patty Arvielo School of Business and Management on April 20, third-year business student Kaitlyn Velasquez said that Arvielo’s story is inspiring.

“Knowing how much my parents sacrificed in order to best set me up for success, and seeing everything that Mrs. Arvielo has accomplished, gives me even more hope for my future in this field,” Velasquez said.

That is the kind of success story that Patty Arvielo would love to inspire. She said she is ready to get to work and already trying to network for a Latina dean.

Her mother and father were both able to attend the unveiling, which she said was special.

“I wish my grandmother was here to see this,” Patty Arvielo said. “It’s so, so powerful. My mom is still on cloud nine telling everybody, and she lives in Newport Beach. There’s not a lot of Latinas that live in Corona del Mar, so she runs around her neighborhood telling everyone who I am. It’s pretty great.”