Moneda Moves (136): The Power of Data In The Latinx Narrative
Feliz martes, mi gente. Last week, I had the immense opportunity to host Google's HOLA Leadership Summit alongside my Google colleagues and while this was an internal conference for our Latinx ERG chapter leads, I wanted to share a big takeaway that will be relevant for our Moneda Moves audience: There is real POWER in the stories we tell.
Especially when we talk about Latinos, our relationship with money and contributions to the US economy, the stories we tell, the narratives we choose to perpetuate and new ones we create have the power to change our reality.
I know this from experience: When I first started pitching stories about the Latinx community and money, as well as entrepreneurship for mass media was back in 2015, I was a full-time journalist. (I still freelance today). At the time, I didn’t see a lot of stories about our Latinx community in the context of being entrepreneurial, culture shifters and innovators. In the news, when it came to money, much of our narrative revolved around consumerism.
Yet, when I looked around my Latinx and POC community, I saw groups ripe with business ideas, execution and the potential to multiply their existing contributions to the US economy, with the right amount of capital. And while I did report on Latinos leading in the business world at the time, pitching stories about our economic power weren’t yet in the limelight, nor was it as easy.
A big missing link was the data.
So it was a big deal to have reports like the ones published by the Stanford Latino Entrepreneurship Initiative, the Latino Donor Collaborate and data from the Pew Research Center when we first started getting access to these numbers. These were the stats that enabled us to further articulate how big we were in the American economy, because we are. Somos grandes.
A big shout-out to our fireside speaker, Elian Savodivker, Director at Stanford University's LBAN scaling program who I spoke with about the power of Latinos in the US economy and how founders are driving growth in our country.
Of course, we needed to represent Chicago right, so I also had the pleasure of bringing local talent to be at our conference: Ximena N. Beltran Quan Kiu, master of storytelling, Jesus J. Montero and Daveed Holmes-- both incredible photographers.
We will be back next week, mi gente, with a full round up of headlines, but in the meantime remember: There is power in the story and in the numbers.
Con poder,
Lyanne
Headlines to put on your radar.
Catch us this week in Chicago! @ Money Makeover Salon: Join us this Friday, August 26, with our friend and leader in the fintech space Ramona Ortega, founder of Thrive. We will be in conversation with Ortega about money and culture during a unique Financial Salon, a safe and relaxing space to learn, share and talk about financial and mental wellness. Find the details below and register here:
Friday, July 26, 2024
4:00 PM-7:30 PM
The Long Hall (map)
Thank you for joining us! Until next week, catch us here on Moneda Moves.