Photograph: Splitshire
Latinas: The Builders Behind Carolyn Aronson, Arcilia Acosta, Beatriz Manetta and Carmen Castillo
The teenager who arrived with no money and no English and built an insurance empire. The founder whose first construction job was painting stadium bathrooms. Ten women who crossed borders, languages and industries — and built companies that carry whole communities with them.
Produced and Edited by The Bourgeois Society Staff
Part one of our two-part Latinas list: ten founders and owners — in insurance, construction, supply chain, procurement, beauty, entertainment, airport concessions and cultural intelligence — whose stories begin somewhere else and end with something built in America.
Selected on the obstacle climbed, the thing built, and the good given back — and fact-checked line by line, with sources linked under every profile.
The full list: Part 1 · Part 2
Founder, CEO and Sole Owner, It's a 10 Haircare — Miami, FL
Official links: Website · LinkedIn · Instagram · X
Image: PR Newswire
Why We're Inspired
Born Iris Ernesta Reyes, Carolyn Aronson entered foster care as an infant and was adopted and raised in Michigan. She did not learn she was Puerto Rican until she reconnected with her biological family at twenty-six.
She became a hairdresser at eighteen and, in 2005, co-founded It's a 10 Haircare — each founder investing $40,000 — around a single idea: one bottle that does ten things, for every kind of hair.
"I didn't even know I was Puerto Rican till I was 26,"
The Story
Aronson bought out her partner in 2017 and is now sole owner of a brand generating roughly $500 million in annual sales, selling millions of bottles a year in more than a hundred countries — and the first independently owned haircare brand ever to advertise in a Super Bowl.
She funds cosmetology scholarships and supports foster-care and youth causes, a pattern of giving back rooted in her own beginning.
Sources
Glitter Magazine — “How Carolyn Aronson Turned Her Puerto Rican Roots Into a Beauty Legacy”
The Smudge Report — “How a Perfect Hair Day Created a Billion-Dollar Business”
Wikipedia — “Carolyn Aronson”
More from The Bourgeois Society: The full list · Carmen Castillo · Dany Garcia
President & CEO, CARCON Industries / Founder & CEO, STL Engineers — Dallas, TX
Official links: Website
Image: CARCON Industries
Why We're Inspired
Arcilia Acosta resurrected her father's small construction company and launched CARCON Industries in January 2000 — a name derived from her father's Carrasco Construction. The new company's first job was painting the bathrooms at the famed Cotton Bowl.
From those bathrooms, her companies grew to work on DFW Airport terminals and DART rail lines, and Acosta became a trailblazer in a Texas construction and engineering world nearly devoid of Hispanic women.
"I have built many relationships in the construction and engineering arena because of my work over the years and through my leadership and civic involvement. My goal was always to diversify my income by starting and building different subsidiaries,"
The Story
Today Acosta leads CARCON Industries and STL Engineers and serves on corporate boards including Vistra Corporation, Magnolia Oil & Gas and Veritex Holdings, alongside deep civic leadership in Dallas. Her own advice to younger employees is pure Acosta: learn every aspect of your job — there is no substitute for being involved in the entire process.
Sources
Latino Leaders Magazine — “Arcilia Acosta: Constructing Character”
Latino Leaders Magazine — “Arcilia Acosta” (interview)
More from The Bourgeois Society: The full list · Adriana Gallardo · Beatriz Manetta
Founder, President & CEO, Argent Associates — Plano, TX
Official links: Website
Image: 24-7 Press Release
Why We're Inspired
Beatriz “Betty” Manetta immigrated from Argentina as a child and spent twenty years in corporate America, including at AT&T, before she took the plunge. In 1998 she founded Argent Associates in a room over her garage, with a computer and her tech-savvy fourteen-year-old cousin — and an idea to fill unaddressed needs in the telecommunications industry.
"I always had the entrepreneurial spirit; I had other businesses on the side but never took the plunge until I knew there was stability at home and the children were old enough,"
The Story
Argent grew from $9 million in revenue to more than $100 million, with more than a hundred employees, eight facilities in six states, and $1.2 billion in customer telecom assets under management.
Manetta mentors women and minority entrepreneurs — including women business leaders from Afghanistan and Rwanda through the Institute for the Economic Empowerment of Women — and was named U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce Businesswoman of the Year.
Sources
AACSB — “Beatriz Manetta | 2015 AACSB Influential Leader”
PRWeb — “Seton Hall University Appoints Beatriz Manetta to Board of Regents”
Seton Hall University — “US Hispanic Chamber of Commerce Names Betty Manetta Businesswoman of the Year”
More from The Bourgeois Society: The full list · Arcilia Acosta · Carmen Castillo
Founder, President & CEO, SDI International — Fort Lauderdale, FL
Official links: Website · X
Image: OMNIKAL
Why We're Inspired
Carmen Castillo was the sixth of ten children in a poor family on the Spanish island of Mallorca. She first came to Florida as a visitor, fell for the country, and returned on a student visa — then launched SDI International from her apartment in Pompano Beach.
Hispanic Business magazine would rank SDI the largest Latina-owned business in the nation, with nearly $1 billion in revenue and nearly two thousand employees globally.
"We are on the right track for sure. I'm not what I would like to be yet. I target high,"
The Story
SDI grew into one of the world's largest Hispanic- and women-owned procurement companies, managing more than $3.6 billion in spend for Fortune 500 clients.
Castillo, a former chair of the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, mentors eight to ten business owners at a time — many of them Hispanic women — and champions supplier diversity as a way to open doors she once had to push open herself.
Sources
Florida Trend — “An American Dream: The Largest Latina-Owned Business in the Nation”
Concordia — “Carmen Castillo” (Leadership Council profile)
Hispanic Executive — “For Carmen Castillo, Business Is Passion”
More from The Bourgeois Society: The full list · Beatriz Manetta · Carolyn Aronson
Founder & CEO, Adriana's Insurance — Rancho Cucamonga, CA
Official links: Website · Instagram · Facebook
Image: Adriana's Insurance
Why We're Inspired
Adriana Gallardo arrived in the United States at eighteen undocumented, without a dollar and without speaking English. Her first job was at Burger King. What she carried with her was her mother Doña Rosy's voice — the inspiration behind everything that followed — and a refusal to stay where she started.
From that beginning she built Adriana's Insurance into one of Southern California's largest Latina-owned insurance agencies, a multimillion-dollar group built over more than thirty years.
"My mom is the one that was always inspiring me and pushing me to do better, and telling me how great I was. It was really hard for me, but I was willing to do whatever it took to make it."
The Story
Gallardo now spends much of her energy handing the ladder back down.
Through Now Rise Business she mentors Latina entrepreneurs, drawing on more than thirty-five years of speaking and community programs, and her company has run free citizenship preparation classes and driver's-license workshops for immigrant communities across Southern California — the same communities she once navigated with no English and no resources.
Sources
L.A. STYLE Magazine — “Adriana Gallardo: From Undocumented Immigrant to CEO”
EIN Presswire — “Adriana Gallardo Featuring in The Hollywood Reporter”
EIN Presswire — “Adriana’s Insurance Launches Free Citizenship Classes to Empower Immigrant Communities”
More from The Bourgeois Society: The full list · Sandra Velasquez · Arcilia Acosta
Founder, CEO & Chairwoman, The Garcia Companies; Co-founder, Seven Bucks Productions — Los Angeles, CA
Official links: Website · X
Image: IMG x RedBird Summit
Why We're Inspired
Dany Garcia, the daughter of Cuban immigrants, grew up watching her father work in an auto body shop — he started sweeping floors at sixteen and stayed thirty-five years. At twelve she was running an eight-stall horse barn after school, and she made herself a promise: become a millionaire and take care of her family.
She went into finance at Merrill Lynch precisely to learn how companies are built.
"We talk about entrepreneurs being born. Well, I think many of them were probably like me, very angsty in their young age and sort of looking at the world differently and not understanding why things happen the way they happen,"
The Story
Garcia founded her own wealth firm, JDM Partners, then left finance to manage Dwayne Johnson's career and build The Garcia Companies.
In 2012 she co-founded Seven Bucks Productions, and her portfolio now spans Teremana Tequila, ZOA Energy, Salt & Straw and the UFL — making her the first woman to hold an equal or majority ownership stake in a major U.S. professional sports league.
Sources
Foundr — “Dany Garcia on Building Her Business Empire”
Paste Magazine — “Dany Garcia and the Drive to Succeed”
Inc. — “Dany Garcia Is the Master of Her Own Universe”
More from The Bourgeois Society: The full list · Carolyn Aronson · Digna Deleon-Morris
Co-founder, Nationwide Financial Firm — St. Petersburg, FL
Official links: Website · Instagram
Image: BrokersVerified
Why We're Inspired
Digna Deleon-Morris arrived from the Dominican Republic at seventeen with almost nothing and took a first job paying $5.25 an hour. She climbed all the way to running an $82 million corporate territory — then 2016 hit, and a business collapse leveled most of what she and her husband William had built.
She started over with one rule: build something other people could copy.
"We don't just teach someone how to make a sale. We teach them how to develop leaders who can create opportunities for hundreds of other families."
The Story
With William Morris she co-founded Nationwide Financial Firm, a bilingual life-insurance agency serving Hispanic and American families in English and Spanish. Its Bilingual Duplication Model has helped agents generate more than $30 million in premium, handing new agents a path from first commission to agency ownership — with mothers working two jobs the group Deleon-Morris most wants to bring home.
Sources
EIN Presswire — “Insurance Agency Founder Behind $30M in Agent Revenue Unveils Bilingual Duplication Model”
EIN Presswire (syndicated) — “Life Insurance Agency Owner Behind Nearly $4M a Month Unveils Spanish-First Growth Model”
More from The Bourgeois Society: The full list · Dany Garcia · Gina Puente
CEO and Owner, Puente Enterprises — Dallas, TX
Official links: Website
Image: Aviation Pros
Why We're Inspired
Gina Puente learned hard work in her father's business and built Puente Enterprises into a concessions company of roughly twenty locations across ten brands, in airports and hospitals.
In 1995 she created La Bodega Winery — an original concept and the first winery in an airport — choosing to invent brands rather than copy them, a model she calls the company's “unique-ability”: creating and adapting concepts for non-traditional places.
"The easier road is to build a portfolio of the same brand. I decided not to go that route. That's what gets me up every day,"
The Story
La Bodega was named DFW's No. 1 retailer two years running — the first retailer there to win the honor consecutively — and Puente kept building: Sky Canyon by Stephan Pyles at Dallas Love Field and DFW, Travelex locations in Dallas and Houston, and a checkout-free store at DFW built with Zippin.
Named Latina Entrepreneur of the Year and Texas Hispanic Business Woman of the Year, she champions Latino leadership and bringing someone else along.
Sources
Franchising.com — “Breaking With Tradition: Gina Puente Expands Business Her Own Way”
Franchising.com — “Gina Puente Loves Airports!”
Airport X News — “DFW Toasts La Bodega Winery As No. 1 Retailer”
More from The Bourgeois Society: The full list · Digna Deleon-Morris · Julissa Prado
Founder & CEO, Rizos Curls — Los Angeles, CA
Official links: Website · Facebook · Instagram · X
Image: Rizos Curls
Why We're Inspired
Julissa Prado grew up in Los Angeles — Pacoima and Mid-City — in a large Mexican family. At eight, her cousin laid her head on an ironing board and ironed her curls straight for a quinceañera, and for years she chased straight hair.
By high school she wanted her curls back, and she started mixing remedies from the herbal knowledge her grandmother Guadalupe Mendoza, an herbal medicine doctor in Michoacán, had passed down. Years later she funded Rizos Curls with $50,000 of her life savings and no outside funding.
"We made do with what we had, which was a clothes ironing board,"
The Story
Rizos Curls reached $1 million in sales before it ever debuted at Target, and the brand is now sold at Target, Ulta Beauty, Walmart and Amazon.
Prado — who earned an MBA, managed major brands for Nestlé and even became a licensed commercial truck driver along the way — built the company on what she calls the Three Cs: curls, community and culture.
Sources
Amazon Selling Partners — “To Build Her Multi-Million-Dollar Haircare Brand, This Latina Entrepreneur Went to Her Roots”
Beauty Independent — “Self-Funded, Latina-Owned Haircare Brand Rizos Curls Hits Target Shelves”
Latina to Latina (Acast) — “Julissa Prado, the Million-Dollar Curl Whisperer”
More from The Bourgeois Society: The full list · Gina Puente · Lili Gil Valletta
Co-founder, CIEN+ and CulturIntel; CEO & Co-founder, Culture+ Group — New York, NY
Official links: Website · LinkedIn · Instagram · X
Image: Hispanic Executive
Why We're Inspired
Lili Gil Valletta came to the United States from Colombia at seventeen without speaking English, leaving her entire family behind. She built a ten-year career at Johnson & Johnson, where she pioneered multicultural marketing for the pharma sector and co-founded HOLA, the company's Hispanic employee resource group — then walked out to co-found her own firms, CIEN+ and CulturIntel.
The Story
Today her Culture+ Group serves Fortune 100 clients including Google, Kellogg's, Kroger, Nestlé, PepsiCo and Prudential, with offices in the U.S. and Latin America; the firm has made the Inc. 5000 three times.
Named U.S. Hispanic Businessperson of the Year by the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, Valletta has built a career proving that Latino stories and culture carry real commercial power.
Sources
WBENC — “Lili Gil Valletta” (speaker profile)
CDO Summit — “Lili Gil Valletta”
Color Magazine — “Lili Gil Valletta”
More from The Bourgeois Society: The full list · Julissa Prado · Linda Alvarado