WIP Bárbara Gómez (1)

SLEI: Latino entrepreneurship is thriving, but faces systemic obstacles to faster growth

A conversation with Dr. Bárbara Gómez, associate director, Stanford Latino Entrepreneurship Initiative
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My guest on this week’s Work in Progress podcast is Bárbara Gómez, Ph.D., the associate director of the Stanford Latino Entrepreneurship Initiative (SLEI). Dr. Gómez joins me to discuss the eighth annual State of Latino Entrepreneurship (SOLE) report released this morning.

Gómez is one of the principal investigators of the new SLEI report which shows that Latino-owned businesses (LOBs) continue to outpace the growth rates of white-owned businesses (WOBs) – and U.S. businesses in general – in terms of number of businesses and revenue.

“We continue to see this pattern. There is a continuous growth that Latino businesses have had in the past decades. We know that Latino business owners continue to strengthen the American economy, not only by increasing the total number of businesses that they start, but also by creating businesses that employ Americans,” she explains.

Gómez continues, “One of the biggest findings was that the number of Latino-owned businesses in America increased by 34% between 2007 and 2019, whereas the number of white-owned businesses in the same period of time decreased by 7 percentage points.”

There are now nearly 5 million Latino-owned businesses across the country, generating more than $800 billion in revenue.

It’s interesting to note that during the three years of the pandemic (2019-2022), “the median growth rate in revenue for LOBs was 25% and 9% for WOBs, and the median three-year compound annual growth rate for LOBs was 7% and 3% for WOBs,” according to the SLEI research.

Gómez says that while Latino entrepreneurs continue to grow, even thrive during unprecedented times such as COVID, they continue to face “systemic disparities that impact not only the growth of their businesses, but also the American economy. Among those challenges include unequal access to financing, as well as access to government and corporate contracts.”

Here is what the SLEI research finds.

Latino-owned businesses seeking loans from national banks have stronger business metrics than white-owned businesses, yet have lower approval rates for loans over $50,000. Also, LOBs receive substantially smaller contracts that take longer to secure from corporations and governments than WOBs, as much as 12 months.

“A year of loss, a year of uncertainty, a year of waiting that can impact not only the contract that you get, but your entire businesses as well,” she explains.

Dr. Gómez and I discuss more of the findings and some of the “whys” behind them. You can listen to the full podcast here or download it wherever you get your podcasts.

Episode 261: Bárbara Gómez, Ph.D., associate director, Stanford Latino Entrepreneurship Initiative
Host & Executive Producer: Ramona Schindelheim, Editor-in-Chief, WorkingNation
Producer: Larry Buhl
Executive Producers: Joan Lynch and Melissa Panzer
Theme Music: Composed by Lee Rosevere and licensed under CC by 4.0
Download the transcript for this podcast here.
You can check out all the other podcasts at this link: Work in Progress podcasts

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Dana Beth Ardi

Executive Committee

Dana Beth Ardi, PhD, Executive Committee, is a thought leader and expert in the fields of executive search, talent management, organizational design, assessment, leadership and coaching. As an innovator in the human capital movement, Ardi creates enhanced value in companies by matching the most sought after talent with the best opportunities. Ardi coaches boards and investors on the art and science of building high caliber management teams. She provides them with the necessary skills to seek out and attract top-level management, to design the ideal organizational architectures and to deploy people against strategy. Ardi unearths the way a business works and the most effective way for people to work in them.

Ardi is an experienced business executive and senior consultant who leverages business organizational transformation through talent strategies. She uses her knowledge and experience to develop talent strategies to enhance revenue and profit contributions. She has a deep expertise in change management and organizational effectiveness and has designed and built high performance cultures. Ardi has significant experience in mergers, acquisitions, divestitures, IPO’s and turnarounds.

Ardi is an expert on the multi-generational workforce. She understands the four intersecting generations of workers coming together in contemporary companies, each with their own mindsets, leadership and communications styles, values and motivations. Ardi is sought after to assist companies manage and thrive by bringing the generations together. Her book, Fall of the Alphas: How Beta Leaders Win Through Connection, Collaboration and Influence, will be published by St. Martin’s Press. The book reflects Ardi’s deep expertise in understanding organizations and our changing society. It focuses on building a winning culture, how companies must grow and evolve, and how talent influences and shapes communities of work. This is what she has coined “Corporate Anthropology.” It is a playbook on how modern companies must meet challenges – culturally, globally, digitally, across genders and generations.

Ardi is currently the Managing Director and Founder of Corporate Anthropology Advisors, LLC, a consulting company that provides human capital advisory and innovative solutions to companies building value through people. Corporate Anthropology works with organizations, their cultures, the way they grow and develop, and the people who are responsible for forming their communities of work.

Prior to her position at Corporate Anthropology Advisors, Ardi served as a Partner/Managing Director at the private equity firms CCMP Capital and JPMorgan Partners. She was a partner at Flatiron Partners, a venture capital firm working with early state companies where she pioneered the human capital role within an investment portfolio.

Ardi holds a BS from the State University of New York at Buffalo as well as a Masters degree and PhD from Boston College. She started her career as professor at the Graduate Center at Fordham University in New York.