Photograph: Splitshire
Latinas: The Builders Behind Linda Alvarado, Maria Rios, Martha de la Torre and Patricia Pliego Stout
Six banks said no — her parents mortgaged their adobe home instead. A thirteen-year-old told she was packing for vacation was actually fleeing a civil war. Nine more builders who started with almost nothing and refused, every time, to stay there.
Produced and Edited by The Bourgeois Society Staff
Part two of our two-part Latinas list: nine founders and owners — in construction, waste, media, travel, food, furniture, staffing, manufacturing and beauty — who turned layoffs, divorces and closed doors into companies of their own.
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, Alvarado Construction — Denver, CO
Official links: Website
Image: Hispanic Executive
Why We're Inspired
Linda Alvarado grew up poor in a family of six children and worked her way through college as a laborer for a landscape firm. When she started Alvarado Construction in 1976, banks viewed women contractors as a high risk: six banks turned her down.
Without telling her, her parents mortgaged their small adobe home for a $2,500 loan at double-digit interest. She started with concrete sidewalks and bus shelters — and she paid the loan back.
"I needed cash to grow, applied for loans, and was turned down by six banks,"
The Story
From sidewalks, Alvarado Construction rose to build Denver International Airport projects, Empower Field and the Colorado Convention Center, and Alvarado became a co-owner of the Colorado Rockies — the first Hispanic owner of a Major League Baseball team, and the first woman ever part of a formal bid for one.
She and her husband also run Palo Alto Inc., which operates some 150 franchise restaurants.
Sources
Hispanic Executive — “Movers and Shakers: Linda G. Alvarado”
Pomona College Magazine — “Blake Street Barrier Breakers”
Wikipedia — “Linda G. Alvarado”
More from The Bourgeois Society: The full list · Lili Gil Valletta · Maria Rios
Founder, President and CEO, Nation Waste Inc. — Houston, TX
Official links: Website · X
Image: Inside Bauer Magazine
Why We're Inspired
When Maria Rios was thirteen, her parents told her to pack — they were going on vacation. They didn't tell her they were fleeing El Salvador's civil war for good. In Houston she went to work alongside her mother, cleaning high-rise office buildings.
She married young, raised three children and put herself through the University of Houston, working for a large waste company while she studied — and fell for the industry.
"In the beginning this wouldn't have seemed like a reality when I was literally wearing every hat in the business—marketing, sales, accounting…you name it,"
The Story
Using a business plan written while finishing her studies, Rios bought two trucks and founded Nation Waste — the first Latina-owned waste-removal company in the United States. The $30 million company now runs offices in Houston and Austin.
Fortune named her one of its 10 Most Powerful Women Entrepreneurs, CNBC featured her on Blue Collar Millionaires, and Rios calls giving back a moral obligation — mentoring entrepreneurship students at the University of Houston's Wolff Center.
Sources
Inside Bauer Magazine (University of Houston) — “Waste Not, Want Not”
Crunchbase — “Maria Rios” (profile)
PRWeb — “Maria Rios Awarded a Multi-Million Dollar Contract with the City of Houston”
More from The Bourgeois Society: The full list · Linda Alvarado · Martha de la Torre
Co-founder & CEO, El Clasificado / EC Hispanic Media — Los Angeles, CA
Official links: Website · Facebook · X
Image: EC Hispanic Media
Why We're Inspired
Martha de la Torre, the daughter of Ecuadorian immigrants, was a CPA and former CFO who spotted a niche nobody else wanted: Spanish-language classifieds. With her husband Joe Badame she co-founded El Clasificado in Los Angeles in 1988.
When the young company was losing money, she did the hardest thing an independent thirty-year-old can do — she sold everything, condo included, and put the money back in to make payroll.
"I was a very independent teenager growing up. Everything I had, I bought myself. So, having to sell my condo and rely on my parents to support me at the age of 30 was very humbling."
The Story
El Clasificado became the largest free Spanish-language classified publication in the United States — revenues over $20 million, a weekly circulation of about 510,000 and some 175 employees — and one of the first 100,000 websites in the world.
De la Torre's motto, learned the hard way, is “fail fast and change it” — and her company serves the small businesses, handymen, painters and property managers of immigrant Los Angeles.
Sources
Hispanic Executive — “El Clasificado’s Classified Legacy”
JPMorgan — “Martha de la Torre on Staying Customer-Focused”
World Biographical Encyclopedia (Prabook) — “Martha Torre”
More from The Bourgeois Society: The full list · Maria Rios · Patricia Pliego Stout
Founder, President & CEO, Alamo Travel Group — San Antonio, TX
Official links: Website
Image: AEM San Antonio
Why We're Inspired
Patricia Pliego Stout was born in 1940s Mexico and moved to San Antonio in 1974, feeling isolated in a city with few immigrants. She and her husband started a small travel agency — and then came the divorce.
Stout kept the fledgling business and two young daughters, far from family, with no business training and no child support, while lender after lender refused her.
"I'm Latina, I'm divorced, but I never gave up because I had two little girls, a house, and no child support. It was do or die."
The Story
She built the Alamo Travel Group to $133 million in sales and seventy-five employees, winning federal travel contracts for the Defense and State departments, NASA and the U.S. Air Force. Appointed to two presidential boards for women in business, she gives back as a co-chair of the Latina Leadership Institute and by speaking to school groups about perseverance.
Sources
American Immigration Council — “Mexican Immigrant Builds Her Way from Small Business to Presidential Appointments”
SACIV — “Patricia Pliego Stout” (Board of Directors)
More from The Bourgeois Society: The full list · Martha de la Torre · Pilar Guzman
CEO and Co-founder, Indi Construction Partners, LLC — Houston, TX
Official links: Website · X
Image: Top 30 Women
Why We're Inspired
Raquel Boujourne is an eighth-generation Texan and a former professional mariachi singer who broke into construction in 2009 the direct way: she saw an ad for someone to dig a ditch, nobody answered her call, so she showed up in person and offered an estimate — figuring she could pick up a shovel.
As a woman in a male-dominated trade, she has had to prove herself ever since.
"We're eighth-generation Texans. The border crossed us. We didn't cross the border,"
The Story
Boujourne now runs what KHOU calls the largest Latino construction company in Houston, with more than $500 million in projects participated in — apartment complexes, bridges, Waffle House restaurants, and her favorite: restoring the University of Houston's Bauer College classrooms after Hurricane Harvey, rooms she once sat in as a student.
Her Boujourne Foundation, founded in 2022, mentors at-risk youth and works on affordable-housing solutions, and she was named a Houston Business Journal Outstanding Diversity Champion in 2023.
Sources
KHOU (via Wealth Santa) — “Houston Construction Entrepreneur Breaking Barriers for Latinos”
Meet Raquel — News (Luna Awards / Houston Business Journal honors)
More from The Bourgeois Society: The full list · Pilar Guzman · Nina Vaca
Founder & CEO, Pinnacle Group — Dallas, TX
Official links: Website · Facebook · Instagram · X
Image: Staffing Industry Analysts
Why We’re Inspired
We’re inspired because Nina Vaca started on her apartment living-room floor with $300 — and when the post-9/11 economy nearly liquidated Pinnacle, she put her life savings and her own home on the line rather than let her people’s company die. She crossed $1 billion in revenue and kept every share.
“I always think failure always brings a gift and that’s the gift of experience.”
The Story
Born in Quito, Ecuador, Vaca emigrated with her family, who ran small businesses in Los Angeles; her father’s death moved the family to Texas. She founded Pinnacle Group in Dallas and, when a national crisis took almost everything, mortgaged her home and refused to fold.
Pinnacle is now the largest Hispanic-owned workforce solutions company in North America — roughly 5,000 employees, serving about 20% of the Fortune 100 — and was named the fastest-growing woman-owned business in the United States by the Women Presidents’ Organization, twice. Vaca owns 100% of it and sits on the boards of Comerica, Kohl’s and Cinemark.
She is chairman emeritus of the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, founded its foundation’s “At the Table” initiative to place more women on corporate boards, was named a Presidential Ambassador for Global Entrepreneurship, and her family foundation helped build a village for earthquake survivors in her native Ecuador.
Sources
CRN — “Pinnacle Group CEO Nina Vaca Shares How She Turned $300 into a Billion-Dollar-Plus Company”
WBENC — Nina Vaca speaker biography
Aspen Institute — Nina Vaca
More from The Bourgeois Society: The full list · Raquel Boujourne · Rosa Santana
Founder & CEO, Santana Group — San Antonio, TX
Official links: Website
Image: Santana Group
Why We're Inspired
Rosa Santana immigrated from Mexico at age five. Her mother Josefina raised five children alone while working full-time — and that example became Santana's operating system.
In 2002, laid off in a corporate downsizing, she bet on herself and launched Integrated Human Capital in El Paso with her eldest daughter, opening a cross-border company in Ciudad Juárez at the same time.
"She was the strongest woman I've ever known,"
The Story
A decade of serving Toyota's suppliers as a Tier II provider led to a historic call: in 2014 Toyota named Santana's newly formed Forma Automotive the first Hispanic woman-owned direct Tier I supplier to Toyota, assembling fully assembled Tacoma truck beds.
Today the Santana Group spans staffing, manufacturing and business services in the U.S. and Mexico, creating jobs on both sides of the border — two generations of women who refused to quit, still compounding.
Sources
ICIC — “Breaking Barriers in Manufacturing: Rosa Santana’s Journey”
Toyota USA Newsroom — “Toyota’s First Hispanic Woman Direct Tier I Supplier”
WBENC — “Advancing with the WBE Stars: Rosa Santana”
More from The Bourgeois Society: The full list · Nina Vaca · Sandra Velasquez
Founder & CEO, Nopalera — San Antonio, TX
Official links: Website · LinkedIn
Image: Dwight Funding
Why We're Inspired
Sandra Velasquez was born and raised by Mexican immigrant parents near the border, and before beauty she led the Latin alternative band Pistolera.
She launched Nopalera — a Mexican botanical bath and body brand built on the nopal cactus — from her Brooklyn apartment in 2020, mid-pandemic, with no outside funding or savings, working three jobs as a single mother at forty-four.
"I had to put myself in those new rooms and apply for every accelerator, every pitch competition, I applied. No one came to discover me. No one is coming to save us. We must do it ourselves,"
The Story
On Shark Tank she turned down two offers rather than settle — standing in her worth on national television — and went on to raise $2.7 million. Nopalera is now sold in more than four hundred retailers, including Nordstrom, Credo Beauty and Free People.
The brand, since moved to San Antonio, exists to elevate Latino culture and to insist Mexican products belong on the high-end shelf.
Sources
Chief — “Sandra Velasquez (Nopalera): Bet on Yourself”
Plantas Strategy (podcast) — “A Conversation with Sandra Velasquez, Founder and CEO of Nopalera”
Conference coverage — “‘We Must Do It Ourselves:’ Latinas Share Their Entrepreneurship Advice”
More from The Bourgeois Society: The full list · Rosa Santana · Adriana Gallardo
Founder & CEO, Half Moon Empanadas — Miami, FL
Official links: Website · X
Image: European Tech News
Why We're Inspired
Pilar Guzman, a Mexican-born mother of two with a master's in finance from Georgetown, founded Half Moon Empanadas in Miami in 2008, in the middle of the financial crisis. Her first South Beach store failed on $11,000 rent and a hard lesson in cash flow.
Then the pandemic closed all but one of her thirteen locations, including the lucrative Miami International Airport sites — and with zero sales, she and her husband and partner Juan Zavala kept paying their eleven salaried managers anyway, because, she said, it was the right thing to do.
The Story
Half Moon rebuilt to twenty-two stores across the country, about half of them in airports. Guzman's vision is simple to say and hard to do: make the artisanal empanada as familiar in America as the burger — built by a workforce that reflects the community it feeds.
Sources
Inc. — “How This Latina CEO Built an 8-Figure Empanada Business After Almost Losing It All”
FIU GrowBiz — “Half Moon Empanadas: A Savory Success Story”
LatinTrends — “How Pilar Guzman Is Making Empanadas a Nationwide Sensation”
More from The Bourgeois Society: The full list · Patricia Pliego Stout · Raquel Boujourne