2020 will be known as the year coronavirus shut down the world as we knew it. It will also be known as the year when terms like systemic racism and economic disparity rose to the top of the national dialogue like never before. In his first week of presidency, President Joe Biden signed three executive orders aimed at addressing racism. One of them makes it harder for companies to skirt Fair Housing Act laws. Fair housing, equal opportunity employment, and criminal justice reform are all incredibly important issues, but any effort to close the wealth gap in America that does not include a significant amount of capital deployed to education, homeownership and small businesses won’t put a dent into the problem.
I wrote a social media post about this topic and received some interesting responses. In the real estate business, we are trained to be self-starters. We believe that hard work and a positive mindset can overcome almost every obstacle. Latinos are hard workers, and that is probably why we are so successful in the real estate business. However, on average, White families in America have ten times the wealth as Black families and eight times as much as Latino families, and it’s not because we don’t work hard enough. On average, schools in White neighborhoods are superior in resources and overall quality of education. Homeownership rates for Whites are twenty percentage points higher than Blacks and Latinos, even when the data is controlled for income, and less than 2% of all venture capital goes to Black or Latino owned companies. Again, none of these gaps have anything to do with our work ethic; they exist because of systemic barriers that have been in place for generations and only one thing will change them: capital.
A study from the Stanford Latino Entrepreneurship Initiative estimated that if Latino entrepreneurs had the same access to capital as White entrepreneurs do, it would add more than one trillion dollars to the U.S. annual GDP. Latino entrepreneurs account for more than 80% of the net new businesses started in America, but most of those businesses are small and they stay small. When a Latino-owned start-up receives an infusion of capital, and the company is successful, wealth and income cascades into the Latino community in the form of jobs and equity.
A few weeks ago, I wrote about how the concept of community reinvestment should go beyond the banking industry. I think every government body and every major corporation in America needs to dedicate resources to community reinvestment. By the time the pandemic is over, the U.S. government will have invested more than $6 Trillion to support and revitalize our economy. We’ll have the money when we need it. While I appreciate the diversity in our new president’s cabinet, and the executive orders aimed at stemming racism in America, without a massive deployment of capital to Black and Brown communities, I’m afraid progress will be modest and our divisions will remain strong.
In this episode, I share my perspective on the tragic killing of Renée Nicole Good and why moments like this demand clarity, restraint, and leadership rather than instant conclusions. We’re living in a time when emotion travels faster than facts, and division often fills the space where understanding should live. My goal here isn’t to inflame, but to add context, acknowledge pain, and encourage thoughtful reflection while the facts are still coming into focus. I hope you’ll watch with an open mind and consider what responsible leadership looks like in moments that test all of us.
In this episode, I talk about why progress rarely comes from perfect ideas or moral certainty—and why waiting for purity often keeps us stuck. Idealism can feel virtuous, but history shows that real change happens when people are willing to act, accept imperfection, and move forward anyway. For our community, that means choosing momentum over stagnation, results over symbolism, and responsibility over comfort. If we’re serious about building power, dignity, and lasting progress, this is a conversation we need to have—honestly and without illusions.
In this episode, I talk about something we’re almost never encouraged to say out loud: wealth is power—literally. Not likes, not outrage, not visibility. I break down why real influence comes from ownership and leverage, not consumption; why income feeds families but equity builds dynasties; and why a wealthy Latino with a clear purpose shouldn’t be seen as a problem, but as proof of what’s possible. If you’ve ever felt uneasy talking about money or ambition, I’d love for you to watch this one and think about what “owning more” could look like for you and our community.