Economic Mobility Episode 3 (3)

The path to starting your own company varies, with many shared experiences along the way

A conversation with Martha Montoya, founder of Agtools, and David Favela, founder of Border X Brewing
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Entrepreneurship is part of the American Dream and it is booming. A record 5.4 million new businesses were started last year, as workers across the country struck out on their own, searching for a different path to a fulfilling career and economic mobility. But that road isn’t always a smooth one for some new business owners who hit roadblocks such as access to financial capital, lack of a strong social network, and other barriers to success.

In this special four-part Work in Progress podcast series – Economic Mobility Through Entrepreneurship – we’ll examine those headwinds and solutions. We’ll hear directly from entrepreneurs, and get advice from leaders in business, education, and government – to learn how starting your own business can be a fulfilling and profitable career choice and a boon to a community.  

This podcast series is made possible through the support of the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation.

According to research by the Stanford Latino Entrepreneurship Initiative, the odds of Latino-owned businesses getting loans from national banks are 60% lower than all other businesses. In 2020 Latino-owned businesses received less than 2% of the available venture capital funding in the U.S. That’s despite Latino-owned businesses pumping $470 billion into the economy. 

Nevertheless, the number of Latino-owned employer firms has grown 35% over the last decade, compared with 4.5% among white-owned businesses, with job growth outpacing even that. 

McKinsey and Company has new research showing that if Latino businesses’ access to capital was improved – and their representation in growing sectors such as tech increased – they would contribute an additional $2.3 trillion in revenue to the economy and create 750,000 new employer firms, resulting in more than six million jobs.

Martha Montoya is a Latina who comes from an entrepreneurial family, but she didn’t set out to be her own boss. She started her own tech company five years ago – Agtools – after leaving a very successful 25-year career in logistics in the global agriculture industry.

David Favela is a Latino who started his Border X Brewing company after his nephews received a home-brewing kit as a Christmas present. He kept his day job even as he and his family moved his small business from his home to three brick-and-mortar locations.

Montoya and Favela took two very different entrepreneurial paths to create a successful company of their own. They share their journeys with us in this episode, talking about financing and the can-do spirit.

Episode 251: Charting the Latino Founder’s Journey
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.