Suazo Business Center President and CEO Silvia Castro, left, and center founder Gladys Gonzalez. Through their work with the Suazo Business Center, the two women have helped nearly 5,000 small businesses in Utah. (Courtesy Silvia Castro and Gladys Gonzalez)
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WEST VALLEY – The Suazo Business Center has launched nearly 5,000 small businesses in Utah over the past two decades, about 93% of which are minority-owned.
Two women have driven this success: the center’s founder, Gladys Gonzalez, and its current president and CEO, Silvia Castro.
The women, both immigrants from South America, know firsthand the challenges first-generation immigrants face when it comes to “making it” in the US. They have used those experiences to provide relevant, culturally multilingual business advice and mentoring to entrepreneurs across the state. .
“The whole concept of ‘I want people who look like me, talk like me and understand me to help me,'” Castro said. “One of the amazing things about the work we do at Suazo is that we can change not only that person’s life, but also the life of their family… we can actually change the economic trajectory of an entire family.”
Making the way easier for others
Gonzalez was on an established career path when domestic terrorism forced him to immigrate to Utah from Bogotá, Colombia, in 1991.
Drug traffickers angered by the extradition of a Colombian suspect to the US and a US promise to send aid to help the Colombian government fight drug cartels have escalated a terror campaign. Gonzalez said the traffickers threatened that for every drug dealer extradited to the US, seven Americans or people working for them would be killed.
As an executive at a US bank, Gonzalez felt like she had a target on her back. The head of the bank left the site almost immediately, while Gonzalez and other staff began working from a secure apartment with convoy escorts to and from work.
“It was a very scary time for my family, my children, myself,” she said. “It was a terrible time because bombs were going off everywhere.”
Her bank offered to transfer her to Los Angeles, New York or Miami, but Gonzalez didn’t feel confident moving to a big city. Instead, she moved to Utah, which she had previously visited because of her faith in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. She expected to find a job in a bank, but was turned down several times. Her degree, ability to write, read and speak English, banking knowledge and experience as a diplomat meant nothing to US employers.
Gonzalez went from working in one of Bogota’s most important buildings, using a personal driver and having two maids, to three low-paying jobs to make ends meet: janitor, newspaper delivery and office cleaner.
“For me, cleaning floors in banks and all that was a learning school, because I learned to appreciate how much people have to struggle when they come as immigrants,” she said. “I had to start from scratch to make a living in the US”
Despite this setback, Gonzalez soon launched Mundo Hispano, which became Utah’s largest Spanish-language newspaper and was eventually acquired by KSL. During the paper’s early years, Gonzalez and her daughter, Sandra Gonzalez, made up the staff. The pair juggled everything from writing and editing to designing and distributing the paper – all while still holding down full-time jobs.
At one point, strapped for cash flow, Gonzalez thought she might have to close the paper. She went to then-Senator Pete Suazo to tell him the news. The senator was adamant that Gonzalez could not shut down what he said was the voice of the Hispanic community.
Suazo helped Gonzalez secure a microenterprise loan for $10,000 — enough to keep the paper afloat. By 2009, the paper’s readership had grown to about 35,000, and it had seven freelance writers, as well as a correspondent in Mexico City and another in Colombia.
“It’s not in circulation today, but it was what allowed me to live the American dream,” said Gonzalez, who also owns multiple businesses, including an advertising agency and a house-flipping company. “The paper didn’t give me money because all my money was already invested, but it gave me visibility and helped me achieve other goals I had.
One of those goals was to open a business center that could help individuals the same way Suazo helped him. In 2001, after Suazo died in an ATV accident, Gonzalez founded the Suazo Business Center. Her vision for the center was to “bring together all the things we have to learn from American culture and the good things we have to offer the American community.”
“We Latinos have an entrepreneurial spirit; it comes naturally to us,” she said. “My advice would be don’t believe you’re any less than anyone else. You can go as high as you want. You can achieve your dreams as long as you believe in them and take action.”
Building on success
While Gonzalez was building a newspaper, Castro was transitioning into the American school system.
Her family moved to Utah from Ecuador in the early ’90s when she was 14, with the goal of giving her and her sisters a better education and, eventually, better opportunities to grow up. financially secure.
Adapting to “a brand new everything” was not easy. Castro’s saving grace was that she and her two sisters jumped into middle life together. They took the most advanced Spanish class their school offered—a little break every day from what Castro said was a completely alien education system.
“I quickly realized it was kind of self-directed,” she said. “It was very fascinating to begin with. And that’s what I kind of realized, that there are a lot of systems here in this country that are self-directed. … So that was one of my first lessons when I got here and I was a teenager.”
This lesson would serve her well as she navigated school and eventually her career. From an early age, Castro knew he wanted to be in business. She made sure to take advanced (college level) economics and finance classes in high school and participated in the business and finance clubs that Kearns High School had to offer. By the time she started at Westminster College, Castro said she was eager to graduate and start her career. She graduated with a degree in international business in three years, despite working full-time.
“I was a woman on a mission,” she said. “But looking back, I wish someone had told me to enjoy it a little more and get to know my peers a little better — because sometimes education isn’t just about papers or going to school; it’s about people who are literally sitting next to you. Let’s be honest, the people sitting next to you are probably going to have a big role in where your jobs are going to be for decades to come, because it’s all about networking .”
It’s one of the things that, as the first in her family to attend college in the US, Castro said she just didn’t know.
Her first job out of college was as an international trade specialist at the Salt Lake Chamber of Commerce. In that position, she helped small businesses learn how to import and export products. The love she developed for small businesses during that first job stuck, though Castro’s career would include government positions, including director of Latino Hispanic Affairs for two Utah governors, nonprofits like the Goldman Sachs 10K Small Business Program , and working with executives and business owners from Fortune 500 companies.
Castro was working for the Salt Lake City Department of Economic Development when her current position opened at the Suazo Business Center. She said something inside her told her she had to go for the position.
“I liked what (Gonzalez) was trying to create with this center,” Castro said. I just felt that they had done this amazing job, but at the same time that it could do more.
She had two initial goals: to create a program for women to address the unique challenges they face and to push businesses to expand into key markets.
“As long as our customers only think of Latinos as their customers, they will always remain small,” she said.
In her five years with the center, however, Castro has achieved these goals and more. The center has opened a second location in Ogden, more than tripled its staff, increased its budget fivefold and significantly increased its stock.
She said the hardest thing she has had to overcome to get to where she is today is low expectations – something she said is “just part of the minority experience”.
“As a Latina, I would have to work three times harder to get equal recognition. Yet, there is always such a low expectation,” she said. “There’s always these low expectations when people are overachieving. If you give them a chance, they’ll surprise you. But those low expectations are still around. And honestly, I think that’s why we’re so successful, because in Suazo, there is no place for low expectations.”
Getting involved
Suazo Business Center offers basic, intermediate and advanced courses for entrepreneurs, as well as consulting meetings in many languages. The center also offers small business loan application assistance as well as in-home micro-loans for those who do not qualify for traditional financing.
For more information about the center, visit suazocenter.org.
Correction: An earlier version incorrectly identified Silvia Castro as the executive director of the Suazo Center; she is the CEO and president.
