Business Booms: Latinas Opening Their Own Doors
 Georgia Pabst - Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
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Barbara Soto-Ryan and Estella Montanez are neighbors in Waukesha. So are Mercedes Sandoval, E. Linda Chavez, Maria R. Sigala-Leiske and Irene Reyes. Marisela Morales just moved in. But they're not suburban, over-the-back-fence neighbors.
They're Latina business owners clustered in Waukesha's downtown. They're also part of U.S. Census Bureau statistics that show Latinas are starting their own businesses at six times the national average.
From 1997 to 2006, the number of Latina-owned firms increased by 121 percent, according to a study by the Center for Women's Business that analyzed census data.
As of 2006, 745,246 firms were owned 51 percent or more by Latinas employing 277,683 people and generating nearly $46 billion in sales, the study finds. The most dramatic growth has occurred in the border states of Arizona, California, New Mexico and Texas, the center said, but throughout the nation, Latinas own businesses in just about every sector.
In 2001, Jacqueline Poulakas, along with investor Peter Mahler, founded Performance Clean Inc., a Milwaukee firm that takes on big jobs such as Miller Park, theaters, sports arenas and festival grounds. At peak times, the firm employs 450, said Poulakas, 37, its president and CEO. Last year, sales totaled $6 million, she said.
"There is so much emphasis now on minority participation and women-owned business that I think it's a real opportunity to be successful," the Puerto Rico native said. In 2005, she was named Hispanic Businesswoman of the Year by the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce. She lives in Oak Creek, where her husband has put his career on hold to care for their three children.
Twenty years ago, when Genoveva Lozada, 55, opened her small Guadalajara restaurant at S. 10th and W. Walker streets in Milwaukee, Mexican restaurants weren't as ubiquitous as they are today. A divorced mother who came here as an illegal immigrant and has since become a citizen, she said that with a lot of help from friends, she bought the building and opened the restaurant, where she served up bowls of caldo de rez and pozole, Mexican soups that still are menu staples.
For many years, she and her family lived above the restaurant so she could manage the business and the home. Now she's planning a modest restaurant expansion "to make it more beautiful." But, she said, she's happy to keep it small, catering to the largely Spanish-speaking customers who find her by word of mouth.
Although Latinas are opening businesses at a fast rate, women-owned businesses, in general, have increased over the past few decades, from 10% in 1970 to 41 percent today, said Erin Fuller, executive director of the National Association of Women Business Owners in McLean, Va.
"The growth rate for all women is impressive enough, but the rate of growth in businesses among Latinas is important because it shows important cultural and economic shifts about how women are viewed as entrepreneurs," she said. It also speaks to the reduced psychological and financial barriers for all women, she added.
In the Latino community, with its culture of machismo, many women ascribed to traditional gender roles, said Maria Monreal-Cameron, the president and CEO of the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce of Wisconsin. In the past two decades, that's changed.
"The women I deal with are more visible, more assertive and more successful," she said. "There's a strong entrepreneurial spirit, drive and hard work. We know how to balance budgets. . . . We've come a long way."
Staffing, accounting
"I think Hispanic women see other Hispanic women who own their own businesses and think, 'Maybe I can do it,'" said Barbara Soto-Ryan, who started FlexAbility in 2001. Her business, at 251 W. Broadway in Waukesha, began as a staffing company but has grown to include human relations management, translation services, multicultural marketing and business development services.
A native of Chile, she said she chose downtown Waukesha because it's between Madison and Milwaukee and because it's easily accessible to Walworth and Kenosha counties. Rents also are affordable, she and others said.
Her downstairs office neighbor, Estella Montanez, who gives her age as "40-something," opened PuertoMex Central Mortgage two years ago after years spent in a variety of jobs from cleaning to styling hair. She found she loved the mortgage business and decided to strike out on her own. She also remembers the loan officer in Wausau who wouldn't hire her.
"He told me my English was no good and he didn't need Spanish speakers - that he needed an American person," said the Puerto Rico native.
When she worked at a Waukesha foundry, E. Linda Chavez, 48, started filling out income tax returns for her husband's friends. Word spread, and her business grew as she juggled five kids and work.
Finally, in 2001, she moved from her home office to 840 N. Grand Ave., where Por Ella Tax Service now has 2,000 clients, 90 percent of them Spanish speakers.
From all those years of working at home, Chavez believes her children learned entrepreneurial lessons early in life.
"When my daughter was about 5, she played make-believe tea party with dolls and would take their orders for coffee and tea. But she never gave anything away," she said. "She always charged."
Salons, then and now
Off and on for the past 30 years, Irene Reyes has operated Styles & Belleza Salon in downtown Waukesha while raising four children. She said she was in her 50s.
"I'm now doing hair on the third generation in some families," she said. "When I started, there weren't many Hispanic businesses, but in the last 10 years, that's changed."
Maria R. Sigala-Leiske, who started MiCaSa beauty salon at 139 N. Grand Ave. in 1998, also has seen rapid changes. "Today there are four times as many Hispanics, and my business has grown," she said.
Sigala-Leiske said she likes Waukesha's small-town feeling and the flexibility that owning a business allows. "You work a lot harder, but you don't punch in and out, and you can keep your kids here."
Three years ago, Mercedes Sandoval, 31, who came to the United States as a teenager, opened El Chisme Hair Salon at 264 W. Broadway in Waukesha. A year ago, she opened a second salon in Milwaukee at S. 11th St. and W. Greenfield Ave. and finds her business booming to meet the needs of the fast-growing Latino community.
"I think women are opening their own businesses because we have lost the fear - especially the fear that we don't speak English well enough," she said in Spanish, the language of most of her customers.
The latest downtown Waukesha Latina entrepreneur, Marisela Morales, 21, opened the Fusion Hair Salon at 230 W. Broadway last weekend with high hopes. "Here everything is possible," the Mexico native said. |
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Business News | October 2007 
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