Hispanic Heritage Month

Latinx women have been starting businesses at over the past five years. Today, there are 2,346,200 businesses owned by Latinx women — they make up 31% of all new women-owned businesses, which is double their share of the population.

For Hispanic Heritage month, Business Insider partnered with (https://www.weareallhuman.org/) We Are All Human, a nonprofit championing diversity, equity, and inclusion, and the (https://ushcc.com/) US Hispanic Chamber of Commerce to identify 10 Latinx business leaders driving change within their communities.

One of the biggest ways you can be an ally to the Latinx community is to shop for Latinx-owned businesses. It's no secret that smaller businesses were hit especially hard during the coronavirus pandemic, including many Latinx-owned shops. That's why it's more important than ever to educate ourselves on products made by the Latinx community, and show our support today and beyond.

The USA TODAY Network series Hecho en USA, or made in America, focuses on the nation's growing Latino community. Roughly 80% of all Latinos living in the U.S. are American citizens, but media coverage of Hispanics tends to focus on immigration and crime, instead of how Latino families live, work and learn in their hometowns. Hecho en USA tells the stories of the nation’s 59.9 million Latinos – a growing economic and cultural force, many of whom are born in the U.S.

“COVID has opened our eyes to the fact that nobody is successful working in silos,” says Mariangela Zavala, the executive director of the Maestro Entrepreneur Center, a small-business incubator in west San Antonio.

The COVID-19 pandemic has negatively impacted many small businesses, and those owned by Latinos have not been the exception. About a third of Latino-owned businesses across the United States have shut down due to the pandemic, according to the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce.

Latina entrepreneurship is steadily growing with a 2018 Stanford report that Latinas now own 44 percent of Latino businesses. Another key finding was that 86 percent of immigrant-owned firms, garnering at least $1 million in annual revenues, are owned by millennials who came to the U.S. as children. Furthermore, nearly half of the growth in new Latino businesses came from businesses started by women from 2007-2015.

The Arizona Minority Business Development Agency (MBDA) Business Center and the Arizona Hispanic Chamber of Commerce will celebrate the 11th Annual Business Diversity Summit on Friday, August 26, 2022, in a virtual format. The event recognizes Minority-owned Businesses and Diversity Spend in Arizona. Join more than 500 of the state’s entrepreneurs and procurement executives, community leaders, industry leaders, and public officials as they share the latest business insights and best practices on diversity and inclusion. Major components include the annual inductions into the Arizona Million Dollar Circle of Excellence (MDCE) and the presentation of the annual Arizona Minority Business Enterprise Awards.