Creating Networks and Partnerships to Amplify Latinos in Massachusetts
A Conversation with Betty Francisco
Betty Francisco is a business executive, impact investor and community leader. She is known as a powerful convener and changemaker, unapologetic about creating visibility for Latinx and people of color leaders. The Boston Business Journal named Betty as one of the 2020 Power 50 – Extraordinary Year Extraordinary People, and in 2018, Boston Magazine named her as one of the 100 Most Influential People in Boston. Betty is currently the CEO of Boston Impact Initiative, a social impact investment fund that invests to close the racial wealth divide in Eastern Massachusetts. She is the co-founder of Amplify Latinx, a social venture that is building Latinx economic and political power by significantly increasing Latino civic engagement, economic opportunity and leadership representation in Massachusetts. Betty is also co-founder of the Investors of Color Network, a consortium of Black and Latinx accredited investors working to close the racial funding gap in startup capital. She serves on the Boards of Directors of The Boston Foundation, Nellie Mae Education Foundation, Beth Israel Lahey Health, and Roxbury Community College. Betty obtained her J.D. and M.B.A. from Northeastern University, and her B.A. in History from Bard College.
Gina Lázaro: Please tell us about Amplify Latinx and its overall mission and goals? What was the impetus for founding the organization?
Betty Francisco: Amplify Latinx is a nonprofit 501(c)(3) organization whose mission is to build economic and political power for Latinos in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. We do that by significantly increasing Latino civic engagement, economic opportunity, and leadership representation across sectors. The overall vision of Amplify Latinx is to have full representation of Latinos in decision-making roles to advance economic and political equity for our community.
Amplify Latinx was launched by a network called the Latina Circle, which Eneida Román and I started in 2012. We are both lawyers, and we met through the work that she was doing at the Hispanic National Bar Association (HNBA); she was looking at the state of Latinas in the law which we called “the silent crisis” due to the lack of Latinas in the profession. The HNBA study on Latinas in the law developed recommendations on how to get more Latinas in the profession. In truth, Latinas often looked at the law as a way to advance equity and justice, but there was a gap in Latinas in corporate leadership roles. There was great urgency to get more Latinas in this field, so these recommendations included increasing role models and access to mentors for Latinas early in their careers, even as students, and expanding the opportunities within the legal profession.
Eneida and I actively promoted more Latinas in the law and mentored many young women and students starting off in this profession, and yet we started to feel that we were not getting this same kind of mentoring as mid-career professionals. We wanted to foster a network that would recognize both the need for championing and sponsorship of women and help these women get into leadership roles of influence. We created the Latina Circle as an experiment in network building to bring together multi-generational Latinas and women of color in different professions so they could learn from each other, build relationships, champion each other, and foster professional development opportunities, which we continue doing to this day.
In June 2012, we launched a Cafecito leadership breakfast series by bringing a high-ranking woman of color to interact with other women who did not have access to her as a role model. The concept was to connect an inspirational leader with women who cared about each other and wanted to foster a relationship of mutual benefit and support. We invited “women on the rise” who embodied that spirit and asked them to bring other “women on the watch” along with them who could benefit from this network of support. At the first Cafecito, we had the highest-ranking Latina at the time, U.S. Attorney for the District of Massachusetts Carmen Ortiz. Our participants were excited to hear her story and how she dealt with challenges. We also celebrated our Latino culture, hence the Cafecito branding, with culturally familiar foods food like Cuban breakfast sandwiches, guava and cheese pastries, and pastelitos. The connections were intentional; nobody left our breakfasts without a name or two with whom they could connect. The first one was super successful with over 50 women, and we committed to meeting every quarter.
Mary Jo Meisner: Were all the women in either the public or private sector?
Francisco: The women were professionals across sectors, from business, law, nonprofit, arts, education, and government, so there was a variety of perspectives. For example, our special guests also included MA State Senator Sonia Chang-Diaz, and Jackie Jenkins-Scott, the former President of Wheelock College who talked about being a Black woman in higher education. The Latina Circle network started to grow organically as women kept bringing others who shared the spirit of the group which is to “lift as we climb.” It felt a little exclusive in the beginning, which created a sense of “I want to be part of that.” By 2015, we started a listserv to communicate with about 1,000 women who wanted to attend an event and leave with a connection that could ultimately open a door. After a few years, we realized it was not enough to just convene, and we wanted to have an impact on the issues affecting the Latino community.
At the time, I was connected to former Boston Mayor Marty Walsh’s effort with the AAUW to train 10,000 women on salary negotiations to address the gender pay gap which affects Latinas the most – Latinas make only 52 cents on the dollar compared to white men. We started hosting salary negotiation trainings and used our convenings to educate our network on topics from the racial wealth gap, the leadership gap and how to serve on a board. These topics enabled Latinas to learn about topics affecting their advancement and take this information back to their workplaces.
Lázaro: Latinas could start to be good advocates for the gender pay gap issue.
Francisco: Right. We then did the same thing on the racial wealth gap. Ana Patricia Munoz, the lead researcher for the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston report on the racial wealth gap, The Color of Wealth, was Latina and she presented to our group. Later, the Greater Boston Latino Network did a report around the lack of Latinos in civic government in Chelsea, Somerville, and Boston, which highlighted the importance of having Latino representation in city government and on government boards and commissions.
That is when we started to evolve to do the behind the scenes work to directly connect women to job and board opportunities and nominate them for awards to recognize their often overlooked accomplishments at work and in the community. Government agencies and employers started to come to us looking for a Latina to join their organization, so we started to operate as a connector of talent. Although we were not politically affiliated, we started to encourage Latinas to seek opportunities in public office which is where you have power and influence over how the rules are set.
A quick story: A young woman named Judith Garcia came to one of the Cafecitos in 2015. She told us she had wanted to run for city council in Chelsea where she lived her whole life. She was 23 years old and did not know how to run for office. We connected her to role models like former City Councilor Marta Rosa and State Senator Sonia Chang Díaz. And when she decided to run, several of the women in the Latina Circle network personally supported her along the way. She ran and won a city council seat in Chelsea. Judith is the youngest Latina on the council and is now running for state representative. She credits having a network of advisors and allies as a critical part of her decision to run for public office. We began to recognize the importance of political leadership and getting more women in public office. It does not have to be Congress; it could be running for your school committee, city council or town council. It is critical to get more diverse voices in all those spaces of influence.
Meisner: Would you please talk about the extent to which Latinos are participating in the civic process? Are they voting?
Francisco: In 2015, we convened an event called the “State of Latino Political Power.” We had Latino Victory present on Latino political leadership and voting participation at the time, and we had political leaders talk about what was happening in Massachusetts. There was a gap created when Oíste, the Latino organization focused on civic engagement, grassroots organizing, and training political leaders, shut down. When we convened the State of Latino Political Power event, we knew that Latinos are a growing demographic not just in Massachusetts but across the country, yet we also knew that our community was not exercising our voice through the vote.
In Massachusetts at the time, only 40% of eligible Latinos were registered to vote. After the presidential election in 2016, a group of around 20 of our core advisors and allies started to talk about how to evolve the Latina Circle network to encourage civic participation and political leadership. We decided to launch a movement to “amplify Latino power and impact.” So, Amplify Latinx grew out of those conversations and became a movement to build Latino economic and political power, which focuses on building leadership representation across sectors and drives civic engagement and voter participation. We also recognized that you can’t build political power without economic power. So we started to focus on economic opportunity by supporting small business ownership because our Latino community is so entrepreneurial. Every time we had the chance to spend money, we chose to spend it with Latino-owned businesses and vendors, so that we were putting money back into the community by supporting our own.
We launched Amplify Latinx in June 2017 at the Edward Kennedy Institute, a replica of the U.S. Senate chamber. This was a symbolic space because we wanted to show our community what it feels like to be in the halls of power where decisions are made for us but not by us; we wanted to create a vision for what it could look like to have the power to shape our future. We envisioned having the leadership representation necessary to reshape the rules, policies and practices that have long adversely impacted Latinos, and change them in a way that is much more equitable and will drive different outcomes for our community. The launch of Amplify Latinx inspired several hundred civic, government and business leaders and community members to become advocates for increasing Latino representation. We continued with a series of workshops on grassroots organizing, how to run for office, and how to get on boards and commissions. We sought to educate and activate our community to become civically engaged.
To grow the Latino vote we partnered with organizations like MassVOTE, Massachusetts Voter Table and others to increase voter engagement and participation. We also decided to open the network to men to be more inclusive, and to focus on engaging Latino millennials because the biggest gaps in voter participation and civic engagement were with younger Latinos, and they are the fastest growing demographic segment. Amplify Latinx became inclusive of men and women, and multi-generational members. We drove the idea that any leader, regardless of their age, can be an advocate for change. Because we believe that you cannot be what you do not see, access to role models is so important; that is why we encourage our young leaders to aspire to and to do the things that we often do not think we can. On the leadership representation side, we continued recommending Latino talent for jobs, boards, and growth opportunities, and created visibility campaigns for Hispanic Heritage Month and Women’s History Month to highlight the accomplishments of our members. We also leveraged technology to support our network.
In 2019, we hired Rosario Ubiera-Minaya as Amplify Latinx’s Executive Director and President. Under Rosario’s leadership Amplify Latinx’s network continues to grow in size, power and impact. Currently we engage 6,000 individuals, 200 cross-sector partners, and 300 Latinx businesses.
Lázaro: Thank you so much for sharing that history, and it is amazing what talented and motivated Latinas can do. Any keys to success in launching Amplify Latinx?
Francisco: Partnerships were essential to our work. When we launched Amplify, we partnered with the Center for Women in Politics and Public Policy and the Gastón Institute, two centers at UMass Boston. They were our research co-partners who create an annual political fact sheet tracking Latino voter participation and political leadership in Massachusetts. Currently, only Chelsea and Lawrence have political parity meaning that their population and their city councils had reflective Latino representation. We launched Amplify with about 60 community and leadership organizations that support our vision and goals to advance Latino representation. Through the years we co-hosted programming with these organizations and helped amplify their work across our community. Today, we have 200 partners across multiple sectors. Partnering is critical, and it is how we have grown our network and reach.
Lázaro: Please tell us about the Latinx community in Massachusetts including sharing key statistics to provide context on the size of the population.
Francisco: Latinos represent 12% of the population in Massachusetts and are projected to reach 1.1 million by 2035, or 15% of the population according to the Gaston Institute. In some cities, Latinos represent a growing share of the population: for example, we are 20% of the population in Boston, 66% in Chelsea, and 78% in Lawrence. The Latino community is not homogeneous and is remarkably diverse with the top demographic being Puerto Ricans, who make up about 41% of Latinos in Massachusetts. We also have large numbers of Dominicans, Brazilians, Salvadoreans and other South Americans.
Our population skews young with the average age of 28 compared to 41 for non-Latinos. Latinos compose 12% of the Massachusetts labor force which is expected to increase to 18% by 2035, yet the current workforce is concentrated in low wage jobs. The opportunity for our state is to encourage and prepare the Latino workforce to participate in higher wage, career-building roles. Educational attainment is critical as 6 out of 10 Latinos are going to college, but only 4 out of 10 are graduating with a college degree. Increasing the college completion rate for Latinos is one pathway to income mobility. We look at the rate of homeownership among Latinos at 30% which is the lowest rate compared to white people in Massachusetts (70%), and below our African American neighbors (36%). Although Latinos are a tremendous consumer demographic, our economic attainment factors are lagging.
Amplify Latinx brings visibility to the issues with data and then highlights ways we can potentially solve these issues. Increasing homeownership is an example because we know that you can build wealth and assets through homeownership. In our community, most Latinos want their children to go to college to get an education as a pathway out of poverty. Oftentimes starting a business is another way to build income and wealth, so that is why Amplify is supporting small business owners through its PowerUp business initiative.
Lázaro: How have Latinx businesses been affected during the pandemic? We know that Amplify Latinx helps entrepreneurs and small businesses through its PowerUp initiative. Could you please tell us more about the challenges small businesses face, and the impact Amplify is having with its program?
Francisco: In 2018, we launched the PowerUp Latinx Business initiative to increase growth and economic opportunity for Latino-owned businesses in Massachusetts. There are over 30,000 Latino-owned businesses, which generate over $4.2 billion in annual revenue and create over 27,000 jobs. We want to raise the visibility and mainstream this untapped economic power that we have in the state. Most large corporations, and even our community, do not realize the number of Latino businesses that we have, nor the consumer power that they bring. PowerUp launched as a visibility campaign to connect Latino businesses to each other, and to advocate for more resources for business owners. Annually, at our PowerUp Business Summit, we highlight the data on the growth of Latino businesses and the ways we can create more opportunities for contracting and access to capital. To facilitate connections, we created an online database of Latino-owned businesses which anyone can access.
We partner with business support organizations such as BECMA, LISC, Foundation for Business Equity (FBE), and the Massachusetts Association of Community Development Corporations (MACDC) to advocate for more funding and small business resources. We have also partnered with North Shore Latino Business Association, Chelsea Business Foundation, and other providers that serve entrepreneurs of color, and with capital providers, incubators and accelerator programs. We pulled together every resource we could find in support of Latino entrepreneurship, and then fostered connections using the PowerUp Summit and behind the scenes matching and introductions.
The biggest barriers for growth in the Latino business community are access to capital and contracts. There are also language barriers, so we advocate for language accessible resources to effectively reach our communities and direct outreach to our communities, so they become aware of available programs and resources.
When COVID hit, we immediately realized that many of these business owners did not know where to go for support. Through our partnerships and community relationships, we put together digital programming to do rapid response workshops on how to manage through COVID, how to access emergency grant funding, and how to deal with furloughing or laying off your workforce. At the time, I started to get involved with local organizations that banded together to offer resources and education to navigate the pandemic. It became clear that many Latino small businesses were often operating on a shoestring, and sometimes did not have visibility into their accounting or finances to understand how they could continue operating profitably.
Latino businesses needed to transform to digital platforms – go from in-store sales to online sales. We collaborated with the Boston Foundation, FBE, and other local groups to assemble a $1 million emergency loan fund for Black and Latino small businesses. We crowdsourced the companies that would be eligible for funding, and we screened the businesses within this group, allowing community leaders to allocate capital based on relationships with businesses that they know.
In the Spring of 2020 when the second round of the PPP (Paycheck Protection Program) loans came out, we wanted to ensure access to this emergency relief program. In the first round of PPP, entrepreneurs of color were left outbecause they did not have access to banking relationships or meet the requirements of having payroll. Many of the smaller Latino businesses were sole proprietors, had 1099 contractors and did not even know that they were eligible for this program. There is also a cultural aversion to loans in our community, and people did not understand that these were essentially grants.
Eneida and I personally felt compelled to help Spanish-speaking entrepreneurs apply for the PPP loans. In this effort, we learned their stories and saw the strength, resilience, perseverance, and passion for our community. These entrepreneurs told us that they have never had a conversation with anyone about their business and available resources; no one had done that outreach, which means we failed as an ecosystem to meet the needs of businesses that are gems in our own community.
This is how Amplify started to get into direct service. We received a Massachusetts Growth Capital Grant to become a small business technical assistance provider. Through our partner, Surfside Capital, we began serving about 35 to 40 small businesses every six months and providing coaching in areas including accounting, finance, and marketing. In the brief time we are with these organizations, we begin to see results, and based on our surveys, the Latino entrepreneurs feel more confident in understanding their financials and cash flows, how to manage expenses and develop growth plans. We also connect them to contracting opportunities and capital sources.
The PPP work evolved into the Coalition for an Equitable Economy whose mission is to create an equitable and inclusive economy for entrepreneurs of color in Massachusetts. Amplify Latinx is one of the founding steering committee members, and the goals include closing the capital access and business support gaps by 2030. This work has also allowed Amplify to get much more involved in the policy side, and the Coalition has advocated for grants and increased growth capital for entrepreneurs of color.
Amplify Latinx and other community organizations were key players in reaching Latino, Black and underrepresented entrepreneurs to access Governor Baker's 2020 small business grant program, the country’s largest COVID relief program at $687 million. About 43% of the grants went to minority-owned businesses and 46% to women entrepreneurs in large part because of the extensive outreach to communities of color. We have also advocated for increased contracting opportunities for Latino and Black business owners. We filed an administrative complaint against the City of Boston when it issued the 2020 Disparity Study, reporting disparities in contracting despite availability of Latino-, Black- and women-owned businesses to fulfill city contracts. The complaint sparked policy changes, which Boston Mayor Michelle Wu is moving forward to provide more equitable contracting opportunities for Black and Latino business owners.
Lázaro: You mentioned tangible programs that Amplify Latinx is leading and their positive impact. Is Amplify Latinx’s work in Massachusetts transferable and scalable to other states with large Latinx populations?
Francisco: Our model is dependent on partnerships. Amplify Latinx is still small; we have not maximized our reach in Massachusetts. Amplify Latinx’s strength is building coalitions around subject matter. For example, if we are advocating to increase voting, we have a group of voter engagement partners we work with. National partners such as Latino Victory Project, are incredibly active with building political power for Latinos. For the small business work, there is a different group of business support organizations and capital partners working collectively to drive economic access and justice. Across the country, there are a number of coalitions that include government players, philanthropy, community groups and nonprofits, which come together to support minority-owned businesses especially in large metros like Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York.
Our network model can certainly be replicated, and we often get asked to launch the Cafecitos program in other cities. To create a networking circle in your own community, there must be the commitment to build the network and to embed the values in the network. You must have a commitment to bringing many diverse voices together because the Latino community is multifaceted, diverse and, like the Asian community, has distinct cultural enclaves. What unifies us is the Latino experience in this country and the desire to build our power and uplift our community.
Lázaro: What are Amplify Latinx’s priorities in the next 5 to 10 years? What goals do you hope to achieve?
Francisco: We are celebrating the 10th anniversary of the Latina Circle and the 5th anniversary of Amplify Latinx. Rosario and the Amplify Latinx team are focusing on engaging our network which is over 6,000 “Amplifiers” strong and aiming to take our programming statewide particularly in cities with large Latino residents. We are also undergoing strategic planning now and one of the focus areas is increasing Latino leadership. We know that representation at the top opens the door for more diverse talent, and policy change that creates more equitable outcomes. One goal is “25 by 2025” which is to cultivate 25 new Latino/a leaders to run for elected and public office by 2025. We also recommend at least 50 Latino/a leaders annually for city or state government boards and commissions, nonprofit and corporate boards, as well as decision-making bodies. As diversity and inclusion become strategic imperatives in the workplace and across boardrooms, we want Amplify Latinx to be a source of talent and a leading network cultivating civically engaged Latino leaders.
A big focus of our work is also amplifying Latino voices to ensure that the diversity of our communities is reflected in mainstream media and portrayed with positive narratives. We run three different campaigns to bring visibility to Latino leaders. For Women's History Month, we recognize 10 Latina leaders, and for Hispanic Heritage Month, we recognize 30 Latino and Latina leaders. They represent a mix of leaders – from highly visible to those you have never heard of, as we try to find people who do not often get recognition but are doing the work on the ground. We also do a campaign around Latino business owners with social media and marketing to drive awareness. This past year, we also launched a campaign highlighting the voices and perspectives of Afro-Latinos and the issue of colorism in our community.
We also would like to keep growing the PowerUp business program. Corporations now have procurement programs where they are trying to tap into more Black and Latino vendors, so we are frequently asked for recommendations. We are connecting Latino businesses that have the capacity to effectively bid on contracts and offer coordinated resources to help build up their capabilities. We also want to provide more access to capital to Latino business owners so more of them can become employer firms and contribute to job and wealth creation. In our community, we often fund our businesses ourselves through friends and family, but we do not have the connections to scale up from the capital side.
Lázaro: Anything from a policy standpoint?
Francisco: Our most ambitious goal is to create a shared policy blueprint for economic prosperity for the Latino community. This would be a comprehensive policy agenda co-created with our partners and community that would find common ground on the public policy levers that move the needle on economic mobility, including housing, education, and entrepreneurship. We would bring other organizations into shaping this agenda while building a multiracial, multigenerational coalition that will collectively advocate for change.
Lázaro: Thank you for sharing Amplify Latinx’s mission, progress, and impact.
Meisner: Thank you so much Betty for walking us through this incredible narrative about your journey.
About the Authors:
Gina Lázaro is a Harvard Advanced Leadership Initiative Senior Fellow. She has a background in global consumer products marketing with her last role as Chief Marketing Officer at FGX International, a subsidiary of Essilor. Gina serves on the advisory council of HighSight, a non-profit focused on educational opportunities for low-income African American and Latino youth, as well as on the board of The Canales Project, a non-profit arts and advocacy organization.
Mary Jo Meisner is a senior business executive specializing in communications, media, government relations, and public policy. Over the course of a 30-year career, Mary Jo has been a journalist, a newspaper and business executive, and was the architect of a groundbreaking civic leadership arm of the Boston Foundation. After spending a year as a 2017 Advanced Leadership Initiative fellow at Harvard University, Mary Jo formed MJM Advisory Services, a bespoke consulting firm that advises senior leaders in the private sector on their social impact initiatives.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.