Moneda Moves

Welcome back, Moneda Moves listeners! Now if you’ve heard from from us before it should come as no surprise: Latinos are entrepreneurial at their core. Much so that between 2007-2017, 50% of all new small businesses created were Latinx owned, per a report from Bain & Company. During that same decade, only one percent of investment from top venture capital firms went to Latinx-owned businesses.

Today, we are going to talk about this gap and a term you’ve likely heard before: Venture Capital. It's a kind of financing investors supply emerging companies with big growth potential. Because while these investment numbers may not be favorable for Latinx-owned businesses looking to scale, VC founders and operators like Noramay Cadena of Supply Change Capital are positioned to shake up the space. 

A bit of background: She's a former Boeing engineer turned investor with three degrees from MIT. Today, Cadena is focused on investing in the intersection of food, culture and technology. Supply Change Capital does this all the while focusing on diverse founders, which are tracking to become the majority citizen in the US. We speak Cadena about her pivot into venture capital, how she invests in companies and biggest findings from her time in the space.

As we emerge post-pandemic, we've entered a new era, mi gente. An era that's transferred to a new generation we call Generation G, for global. These are often hard-working young adults, hungry to effect change and contribute to economic growth. They also more often have a good amount of cash versus good credit history.

It's this audience that Kristy Kim, founder credit building startup TomoCredit is tapping into. Picture this: You're an immigrant student attending one of the most prestigious schools in the US, with a good track record otherwise, but getting rejected from auto rate, insurance loans, mortgage because you don't have a credit score. That was exactly Kristy's issue and one she knew affected so many people living in the US, especially immigrants who didn't grow up building credit. Informed by her personal experience and that of her industry after working internationally in VC, she built TomoCredit for over 30M people who were just like her and never got the chance to start building credit. Today, we speak with Kristy about the difficulties behind building credit in the US, and how TomoCredit seeks to solve these very issues. No te lo quieres perder.

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Follow your host Lyanne Alfaro on Instagram: @LyanneAlfaro

Main podcast theme song from Premium Beat

Our music is from Epidemic Sound

If there’s any entrepreneur who can speak to the power of navigating multiple worlds, and tapping into her inner creative as a business executive it’s Jessie Medina, Founder of diverse creative space FEMX Quarters. Jessie, a Dreamer from Argentina, is no stranger to embracing being a multi-hyphenate. She’s gone from being an immigrant to successful corporate executive, to podcast host a Forbes Next1000 entrepreneur. FEMX is a space in San Diego built to connect like-minded women entrepreneurs, leaders and creatives. Today, Lyanne Alfaro, Host of Moneda Moves speaks with Jessie about building a company as an immigrant, making the move from corporate to entrepreneurship and what she’s learned along the way.

Subscribe to our newsletter to receive a weekly digest of Latinx and money news: https://monedamoves.substack.com/

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

On this episode of Moneda Moves in partnership with adidas, we are speaking with Mario Argote, Chief Marketing Officer of Up2Us Sports, helping bring sports to underprivileged communities. He calls it a gateway to further opportunities. Opportunities like new skills, networks, and mindset. And it’s especially a game-changer for those who don’t have access today.

Sports are a big part of US popular culture and can be a formative part of our children’s education curriculum. But whether or not they have the privilege to partake largely depends on a variety of factors -- among them related to money.

More than 80 percent of children from higher-income families participate in sports. Meanwhile, less than 60 percent of children from lower-income families, making less than $30,000 a year, take part -- that’s according to the Pew Research Center. And that comes as little surprise, given that schools serving a high percentage of students in poverty are less likely to offer sports.

Up2Us Sports, which is sponsored by adidas, is a nonprofit on a mission to address these socioeconomic disparities, often taking place in people of color communities. Today, we discuss how the organization is providing solutions with bodies in these neighborhoods -- and we hear from a Up2Us Sports Sports Coach, Diana Luna, and Up2Us Sports VISTA volunteer, Emily Murtaugh, helping programs run more efficiently. We speak about the impact these volunteers have on kids in areas of need, how the program impacts their professional advancement and how they facilitate connection through community.

No te lo quieres perder.

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Moneda Moves is a platform, newsletter and podcast all about the Latinx community, our relationship with money and role in the American economy. Because many money issues don’t impact just our community, we also explore intersectional money issues impacting POC communities.

Follow Moneda Moves on Instagram and Twitter @MonedaMoves and subscribe to our weekly digest at monedamoves.substack.com.

Your host is Lyanne Alfaro, who tells stories about what’s next in the world of technology, business and entrepreneurship. With more than a $2.7 trillion GDP, she is especially passionate about exploring the Latinx influence in the world of business, which she speaks about via newsletter, podcast and platform, Moneda Moves. She is an award-winning journalist, having reported in national outlets including CNBC, NBC Latino, Business Insider, Millie Magazine and worked on audience engagement as well as strategy.

You can find Lyanne across Instagram and Twitter @LyanneAlfaro.

Today we speak with Geraldine Ridaura Schumacher, a Latina entrepreneur based in California and a self-proclaimed numbers person. In 2016, she set out to start Holy Matcha, one of the first businesses selling the powdered green tea drinks in San Diego. By last year, following the start of the pandemic, she had stretched herself far more, all to help her business stay afloat.

On this episode of Moneda Moves, your host Lyanne Alfaro explores how one founder transformed her matcha business and took matters into her own hands to survive the pandemic.

This interview was taped end of June 2021, shortly after this summer’s reopening in California, so we also discuss her approach to leading her business today -- a year later -- her relationship between entrepreneurship and mental health as well as her cautious outlook for when businesses emerge from the pandemic. No te lo quieres perder.

Follow Moneda Moves on Instagram: @MonedaMoves

Subscribe to our newsletter to receive a weekly digest of Latinx and money news: https://monedamoves.substack.com/

Main podcast theme song from Premium Beat

Our music is from Epidemic Sound

Meet Roosevelt Giles. Today, he is President and CEO of Atlanta Life Insurance Group and alum of AT&T, where he built network protocols for the Pentagon and Special Forces.

But growing up, he and his nine siblings grew up picking cotton alongside his sharecropper parents. The plantation owner cheated his father, and, being illiterate, his parents had no way to prove he was keeping more of their profit than he was owed. Eventually, Roosevelt and his sisters paid off the family’s debt and managed to get an education. The company he runs, Atlanta Life, was founded by a former slave Alonzo Herndon who also happened to build one of America’s first successful Black businesses.

I’m your host Lyanne Alfaro, and on today’s episode of Moneda Moves, we talk about his journey to gaining a higher education, becoming a leader in technology and his ideas to rebuild Black Wall Street. These are ideas, as we discuss, that other disenfranchised groups in the United States can borrow as we work to close the racial wealth gap. Also in this episode, we talk about the kinds of responsibilities corporate companies must answer to now as it relates to people of color in a world that is emerging from the pandemic.

No te lo quieres perder.

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Follow on Instagram and Twitter on @MonedaMoves

Our intro music is "Numero de Cuenta" by Fanta Nelida

Other music by Epidemic Sound.

Priscilla Esquivel Weninger is a Texas Latina and daughter of immigrants from Mexico and Peru. She’s also a jefa, boss, who landed her dream job working within professional services as a human capital strategy consultant, having earned an MBA from the University of Texas at Austin with a full-ride scholarship — it’s a journey she embarked in her mid-twenties, when she realized that the salary she earned in the nonprofit space wouldn’t help her achieve the financial independence she desired in the long run.

She does not mince words about the journey to get there and stresses: The path is not linear. In fact, it involved imposter syndrome, a lot of mindset challenges and pivots.

In this episode of Moneda Moves, we speak with the host of the Early Career Moves Podcast, Weninger, about her trajectory, challenges as she embarked higher education and accelerators in her career. We also talk about what obtaining an MBA did for her career.

Today we’re going back to our roots in journalism. We spoke with Kori Hale, who is CEO and co-founder of CultureBanx, redefining tech and business news for underrepresented communities using music.

Once an investment banker, Kori quickly developed an eye for news. She became the first Black woman to anchor a daily news show from the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, covering the intersection of business and culture. Yet, she knew there was a need for business news that covered Black and people of color specifically. Enter CultureBanx, a website covering business daily and redefining coverage for these communities.

This interview was also done for Meet La Prensa, a network of Latinx and POC journalists across the US. You can find them on YouTube as Meet La Prensa.

Intro music is from Epidemic Sound.

President Joe Biden called the $2.7 trillion American Jobs Plan “a once-in-a-generation investment in America...the largest American jobs investment since World War II.”

The details of the plan are still coming to light, but elements include childcare, paid family leave, investing in community college.

What will this plan and Biden’s administration’s plans at large mean for the Latinx community and how will the administration help get our communities back to work? We spoke with 35th U.S. Secretary of Commerce and CEO or re-skilling tech company EmPath Carlos Gutierrez in our most recent episode for his assessment.

A big shout-out to journalist-based group Meet La Prensa, a new YouTube channel spotlighting Latinx and reporters of color. This episode was done in partnership with them.

It’s financial literacy month, mi gente, and that means we are diving in deep to personal finances. Today, we speak with Founder and CEO of Debt-Free Latina, Mayra Alejandra Garcia.

She is a financial coach teaching women and families how to get out of debt, grow their net worth and claim their financial independence.

In 2010, she was stressed out about our bills, living in a house she couldn't afford, had two car loans, student loans and credit cards. She was ready to make a change and learned how make a budget. A few years later, she created what she calls The Cash Flow Method, enabling people she coaches to see where every penny is.