Hispanic Entrepreneurs

What follows are the stories of eight successful Hispanic entrepreneurs.  These individuals were selected as role models because their entrepreneurial successes have occurred in many different fields of business.  Further, they have not only made names for themselves and their businesses, but they also are notable for their contributions to other important institutions that are bases of American society.  Note that education was a foundation for the careers of these entrepreneurs.

Jorge M. Pérez

A son of Cuban-exiled parents, Jorge Pérez was born in Argentina in 1950.  He was raised there and in Bogota, Colombia before moving to the U.S. for college in 1968.  He earned a Bachelor of Arts from Long Island University C.W. Post, summa cum laude, and a Master of Urban Planning, with highest honors, from the University of Michigan.

Pérez began his career as an urban planner and development consultant for the city of Miami. There he met developer Stephen Ross, an investor and fellow University of Michigan alumnus. In 1979, they co-founded The Related Group of Florida which became the leading developer of multi-family residences in the U.S.  During the 1980s, the firm built affordable housing, then switched to high-end condo construction. In all, the company has developed or managed 90,000 residential and commercial units, the majority of which are in South Florida.  The Related Group has become one of the largest real estate organizations and largest Hispanic-owned businesses in the U.S.  Perez has branched out into real estate markets in Uruguay, Mexico, and Argentina.

Pérez has received great acclaim for his business success and philanthropy.  In 2005, he was named one of the 25 most influential Hispanics in the U.S. by Time magazine.  In 2006, Pérez became the first American developer to receive the prestigious “Icon in Real Estate Award of Excellence” at the Cannes’ MIPIM industry event, the world’s leading property exhibition.  Pérez received the “Sand in My Shoes Award” in 2006, the Greater Miami Chamber of Commerce’s highest honor.

A devoted art collector, in 2011 he pledged $35 million in cash and artwork over ten years to the Miami Art Museum.  In return, the museum was renamed the Pérez Art Museum of Miami-Dade County.  Upon his death, his extensive private collection of art will be donated to the museum.

The Jorge M. Pérez Family Foundation was created to help Greater Miami support programs and organizations that provide educational opportunities for young people and that make the community a healthy and culturally interesting place to live. For example, in 2020, the Perez Family Foundation donated $350,000 for coronavirus relief efforts to assist local organizations dealing with the pandemic. In 2023, the Foundation launched the third edition of the Pérez CreARTE Grants Program, awarding over $3.5 million to organizations across Miami-Dade County that seek to cultivate a vibrant, connected, and culturally stimulating arts ecosystem. As part of this program, a grant was awarded to foster the arts scene in Little Haiti. Finally, by committing to The Giving Pledge, a campaign founded by billionaires Warren Buffett and Bill Gates, Pérez in 2012 promised to donate 50 percent of his wealth to philanthropic causes. Pérez, himself, describes his commitment to the arts and philanthropy in an engaging video about his life.

Nina Vaca

Nina Vaca was born in Ecuador to parents who emigrated to Los Angeles.  Following the death of her father, her mother and 4 siblings moved to Texas.  In 1994, Vaca earned a Bachelor of Arts in Speech & Communication with a minor in Business Administration from Texas State University. As a young girl, she watched her father run a successful business, and it instilled the interest to start her own company.  In 1996, at age 25, Vaca founded Pinnacle with a $300 business check and a Dell Computer.  Pinnacle began as a one-woman staffing firm that relied on information technology to match companies and job candidates.  By the end of her first year the company had earned $30,000.  The company has grown into a workforce solutions powerhouse providing a variety of services of value in the technology, transportation, financial services, and telecommunications industries.

In 2007, Pinnacle began serving a nationwide market followed by entrance into the Canadian market in 2009.  Pinnacle is now an international talent acquisition and consulting firm.  Vaca has been a leader in adopting the latest innovations as the basis for her company’s growth. 

Vaca has received numerous awards and recognition for her business success. She became the youngest Distinguished Alumna in the history of Texas State University in 2012.  Every year, Inc. Magazine names the 500/5000 fastest growing privately held, for-profit independent companies in America.  Pinnacle has appeared on the list 13 times.  In 2015 and 2018, Pinnacle was chosen the fastest-growing woman-owned/led company by the Women Presidents’ Organization. 

Vaca was appointed a presidential ambassador of global entrepreneurship by President Obama in 2014.  In this position she represented the White House and the Department of Commerce in a worldwide entrepreneurship crusade.  She joined other world-class technology executives in 2019 as a member of the Forbes Technology Council to provide insight into the technology industry.  In preparing to become one of the few (and youngest) women to serve as a director of a publicly-traded company, Vaca completed the Corporate Governance Executive Program at Harvard.  She served as a board member at Comerica, Kohl’s, and Cinemark. 

An avid triathlete, Vaca has competed in numerous famous races.  Her participation in two of these each raised more than $100,000 for charitable causes in Ecuador.  An excellent video reveals her approach to leading an organization and her commitments to philanthropy, empowering women, and other social causes.

Tony Jimenez

Anthony R. Jimenez was born in the Portsmouth Naval Hospital in Virginia.  His father, a twenty-year Navy veteran, was of Puerto Rican descent, and his mother had Cuban roots. He was an entrepreneur from childhood, selling lemonade, delivering newspapers, washing cars, and cutting lawns, constantly looking for ways to make money. Following graduation from high school, Jimenez served a twenty-four-year active duty enlistment in the Army.  He is a retired Army officer and a highly decorated Service-Disabled Veteran.

Education has been a major life activity of Jimenez.  He received an Army active-duty ROTC scholarship and earned a bachelor’s degree in business management from St. Mary’s University in San Antonio, Texas.  Jimenez also completed a Master of Arts degree in computers and information systems from Webster University, and a Master of Science degree in acquisition management from the Florida Institute of Technology. He is a graduate of the Executive Education Course at the Dartmouth Tuck School of Business.

While in the military Jimenez worked for the Department of Defense in solving platform transformation problems created by reshaping an organization’s information technology (IT) operating model (for which he held a top-secret clearance).  When he left the military, it made sense to work in a business that utilized the technological expertise and government contracting knowhow he had gained in the service.  Therefore, Jimenez began his career in the private sector in 2003, joining the global IT company Unisys as director of enterprise solutions. 

Seven months later, Jimenez founded MicroTech in 2004.  Being one of only a few Hispanic-owned IT businesses at the time posed difficulties, notably confronting stereotypes. However, important friendships and contacts resulting from his years in the Army and Washinton, D.C. helped Jimenez win significant government contracts. Soon, MicroTech became one of the largest Hispanic-owned IT companies in the nation. It is a multi-million-dollar company with contracts supporting government agencies and Fortune 500 companies.  Hispanic Business Magazine named MicroTech the No.1 Fastest-Growing Hispanic-Owned Business in the Nation for three years in a row (2009-2011).  In 2015, when the next generation of IT turned more heavily toward cloud, network, and cybersecurity, Jimenez restructured MicroTech.  To this end, he invented and secured several patents for his cloud appliance and cloud solutions.  Jimenez tells the story of the creation of MicroTech in a short video.

MicroTech has received praise from several national organizations, including the National Veteran-Owned Business Association, and numerous technology publications, including Inc. Magazine, Digital Software Magazine, and Washington Technology.  Among the many awards Jimenez has received include being recognized as one of the “Most Influential Hispanics in the Nation” by Hispanic Business Magazine, one of the “Most Powerful Minority Men in Business” by the Minority Enterprise Executive Council, and “one of the 100 Most Innovative Entrepreneurs in the Nation” by Goldman Sachs.  In 2016, Jimenez (along with Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor) was the recipient of the Hispanic Heritage Foundation’s Leadership Award.  Finally, numerous elected officials have sent letters of appreciation and commendation, including letters of gratitude from two sitting Presidents of the U.S.

Jimenez has not forgotten his Hispanic roots.  He has served on the boards of the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, the U.S.-Mexico Chamber of Commerce, and the Latino Donor Collaborative. He is the former National Chairman of Latinos in Information Sciences and Technology Association.

Ana Bermudez

Ana Bermudez is the oldest of six children raised in San Diego, California, by her single Mexican mother.  Always an eager reader and fascinated by computer science, she was a good student at San Diego High School and earned a scholarship to Notre Dame University from which she received a bachelor’s degree in Finance. 

Upon graduation, Bermudez worked as a wealth management adviser at Merrill Lynch for about five years.  In 2011, she co-founded AWM Global Advisors, a registered investment advisor firm in San Diego.  Her career in finance provided the opportunity to work with very successful entrepreneurs who taught her that taking risk and “just going for it” were the keys to their success.

Bermudez is the founder and CEO of TAGit™, the mobile app used to buy items seen on television shows.  TAGit was founded with personal savings and loans.  An angel investor, the Eva Longoria Foundation, provided the funds necessary to grow the company.  Once TAGit identifies the TV show that you are watching, it presents you with a list of merchandise related to the show that is available for purchase with the app.  

TAGit is now a brand that uses its success as a technology company to empower under-represented populations. Bermudez is passionate about assisting her community and promoting STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) and higher education in under-served communities.

Bermudez has won various competitions for tech engineers, including the 2015 At the Table Technology Entrepreneurship Competition administered by the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce Foundation.  Bermudez has been a Fellow in the Stanford Latino Entrepreneurship Initiative and in Stanford’s Startup Leadership Program.  She also has been President of the San Diego High School Foundation and a member of the Advisory Board of the University of Notre Dame Institute for Latino Studies.

Two videos are useful to learn about Bermudez.  She provides substantial information about her life and business in an interview.  A second voice-over pictorial presentation also contains a great deal of biographical information.

Kristen Sonday

Kristen Sonday was born in New Jersey. She was a first-generation Latina at Princeton who earned a Bachelor of Arts degree. Following graduation, she gained experience in the legal field as a Department of Justice agent doing communal work in Mexico and Central America. With an attorney named Felicity Conrad, Sonday co-founded Paladin, a digital platform that matches lawyers with pro bono cases (legal work without charge for a client with a low income). According to the Self-Represented Litigation Network, approximately 60 percent of civil court cases have at least one party without a lawyer that represents them.  In a video, Sonday describes how Paladin service helps law firms run more efficient pro bono programs with the end goal of increasing access to justice.

From an initial 50 members, Paladin now has more than 1,500 members, including lawyers from top firms, universities, and corporations. In her present role as Chief Operating Officer, Sonday has expanded the platform across the U.S. and is reaching into international markets. Paladin is striving to manage pro bono programs in other fields such as engineering and finance. In 2020, Paladin opened a new pro bono portal for attorneys interested in assisting people who have suffered as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Sonday is a Fellow of Stanford’s Latino Entrepreneur Leaders Program.  She served as Entrepreneur-in-Residence, a Google for Entrepreneurs Code2040 program supporting Black and Hispanic founders.  In 2017, she was named Woman in Tech to Watch by the American Bar Association, and was named Influential Woman in Legaltech by the International Legal Technology Association.  Additionally, Sonday serves as the Co-Chair of the Legal Services Corporation’s Emerging Leaders Council.  In this capacity, Sonday works to highlight the value of legal aid in the U.S.  Finally, she is a partner with LongJump Ventures, an organization focused on providing capital, connections, and community to help entrepreneurs build fast-growing scalable businesses.

In 2022, Legal Aid Chicago, the largest legal services organization in the Chicago area, launched an integration pilot program between LegalServer, a case management system for civil legal aid and public defender organizations, and Paladin. The integration will streamline pro bono volunteer recruiting and ultimately help to provide free legal services to a greater population of people living in poverty.

Jaime Martinez

Jaime Martinez was raised in Arizona by a traditional Mexican family with several generations of small business ownership.  Following attendance at a community college, he graduated with honors from Arizona State University while working as a financial analyst for Ameriprise Financial company.  His commitment to a career in education was spawned by a two-year assignment with the Teach for America program (a nonprofit organization whose stated mission is to “enlist, develop, and mobilize as many as possible of our nation’s most promising future leaders to grow and strengthen the movement for educational equity and excellence”).  Martinez taught low-income, primarily Latino students, some of whom he considered to have specific talents and needs that could be better addressed by programs at other schools.  

After Teach for America, Martinez began teaching in a charter school.  His financial background enabled him to open several charter schools, an ability that was recognized by the charter management organization which placed him in charge of marketing operations.  Several consulting positions eventually led Martinez to start Pheonix-based Schola, an educational technology platform that provides families with the tools they need to find the school and educational programming that best satisfies the needs of their children. 

Martinez created several digital solutions that assist parents at every step of the enrollment process for children entering pre-K through grade 12.  The company has had to overcome several challenges, including navigating the different transfer policies and school systems that vary from state to state.  Within a few months of its launch, Schola matched and enrolled more than 150 students.  Currently, thousands of students and families in 29 states use the firm’s website to research schools and find the right match, whether it is a public, private, charter, magnet, or online school. 

In 2020, Schola raised nearly one million dollars to optimize software and expand into new markets.  A year later he was able to raise $2.5 million from venture capitalists around the country as well as a few angel investors from Arizona.  Schola obtained $10 million in Series A funding. (funding for start-ups that have shown progress and potential to grow and generate revenue) in 2023.  “With triple-digit annual recurring revenue growth, this minority-founded and led organization has already surpassed 100 thousand students searching for the most suitable school in their platform to improve educational outcomes across the U.S.”. 

Martinez prepared a video that shares his experience as an educator and describes how it led him into the realm of education technology.

Dyan Gibbens

Dyan Gibbens was born in San Antonio, Texas. Her father was an FAA controller and her mother was a teacher. She studied civil engineering, instructed skydiving, and learned to fly at the U.S. Air Force Academy.  During her required military service following graduation, Gibbens worked as an engineering acquisitions officer managing stealth nuclear cruise missiles.  She also provided logistics support for Air Force One (the aircraft used to transport the President of the U.S.) and Global Hawk unmanned aerial service engineering.

After her Air Force service, Gibbens began pursuit of a new career as an entrepreneur.  She earned a Master of Business Administration at Ohio State University and began coursework there in the doctoral program in Industrial Engineering and Management.  She did not complete a Ph.D. because she had to devote most of her time during her third year of study to a start-up business.

Relying on their own savings, Gibbens and her husband started Trumbull Unmanned in 2013. Trumbull is a technology-based company that produces unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs).  A large part of her work is providing surveillance of oil and gas pipelines, spotting leaks when they occur to help energy companies meet their environmental responsibilities.  Trumbull has remained profitable without receiving any institutional funding.  Besides serving clients in the U.S., Trumbull has established offices in Canada and Australia. 

Gibbens’ entrepreneurship not only addresses environmental issues, but it is meant to inspire the next generation of STEM leaders and underrepresented founders.  She hopes her story motivates other girls, women, and Latinas to fall in love with science and engineering.  That story is told in an informative interview captured on video.  In 2015, Fortune named her as one of the women shaping the drone industry.  Her extensive background in wireless systems and flying earned her the Society of Petroleum Engineers’ Distinguished Lecturer.  She also has won awards including Forbes’ Top 25 Veteran Founded Startup, Fortune’s Women in Drones Society, and Entrepreneur Magazine’s 100 Brilliant Companies.  Gibbens has spoken numerous times in the White House, U.S. Senate, and around the world on data management and cyber security for unmanned and robotic systems.

Reinaldo (Rey) Lopez

Born in Puerto Rico, Reinaldo (Rey) Lopez migrated with his single mother to Massachusetts in the early 1960s.  At age 14, he worked on tobacco farms in the summers.  After graduating from Wilbraham Academy, Lopez was employed in a variety of factory blue-collar jobs.  Soon, the young entrepreneur owned maintenance and renovation service companies. 

After selling these businesses, Lopez was recruited by a large company in New York City in the early 1990s to market employee leasing services.  This was his first exposure to a professional employer organization (PEO), an enterprise that provides small and medium size businesses with human resource services and solutions that help lower employee benefit costs, reduce administrative workloads, and manage critical human resource functions. 

According to Lopez, “The employee leasing company that recruited me was a bad player in the industry.”  It failed to make its clients’ payments for both federal and state unemployment taxes, and federal and state withholdings.  Although his position as an account executive did not hold Lopez legally responsible to his clients, he cashed in his life insurance policy to pay the outstanding taxes.  That is how RMI began in 1995 with many of his former clients.

RMI has grown tremendously and is now one of the largest Latino-owned PEOs in the U.S.  In 2018, RMI was awarded the U.S. Department of Commerce’s prestigious Minority Professional Services Firm of the Year Award.  That same year Lopez’s daughter Rachel, the RMI president, was named the Worcester Business Journal’s Family Business Leader of the Year.  When Rachel was named CEO of RMI effective September 1st, 2021, Lopez transitioned to Director of Sales and will continue serving RMI on its Board of Directors.

A very personal video is available in which Lopez discusses his career and guiding management principles in founding and growing RMI.

Discussion Questions

  1. In your personal experience, are you familiar with an existing LOB? If so, what is the nature of the business conducted by this LOB? For example, what product(s) does it sell or what service(s) does it provide? Is it a new business? How big is the business – e.g., does it employ many workers?
  2. What has been the effect of LOBs on the American economy?
  3. What are venture capitalists and angel investors?  What role do they play in entrepreneurship?
  4. Hispanics face important hurdles in opening and growing a business that non-Hispanic people with similar commercial goals typically do not confront.  What are these hurdles?
  5. What personal characteristics are important for success as an entrepreneur?
  6. Has the career of any of the eight Hispanic entrepreneurs profiled made you interested in starting a business of your own? Explain what you found appealing.  If none interest you, why not?

Additional Resources

The status of LOBs is studied by the Stanford Latino Entrepreneurship Initiative, a research and education project conducted by Stanford University and the Latino Business Action Network. This Initiative gathers survey data from American LOBs. The State of Latino Entrepreneurship report provides the latest trends in Hispanic entrepreneurship in the U.S. The 2022 national survey was administered online to 5,011 Latino-owned employer businesses and 5,017 non-Hispanic White-owned employer businesses, all of which generated at least $10,000 in annual revenue and had one employee beyond the owner.

Two 2023 articles published by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce contain brief descriptions of influential organizations and government-backed initiative that offer assistance to Hispanic-owned businesses.  One article lists many organizations intended for minority and underserved applicants, including some specified for Hispanic applicants; the focus of the other is organizations that serve Hispanic applicants, although several are included that serve socially and economically disadvantaged individuals, including Hispanic entrepreneurs. These are excellent resources for Hispanic entrepreneurs trying to establish and grow their start-up organization.

The eight individuals described above obviously represent only a small, although significant, sample of prominent Hispanic entrepreneurs. Several respected news sources offer information about other successful Hispanic entrepreneurs. Each of these sources contain brief background information about the entrepreneur.

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