BuildING Futures
Financial empowerment is the mission of Ricardo López Valencia.
By Kimberly García

As senior vice president of emerging domestic markets for ING Group, a global financial services company, Ricardo López Valencia’s aim is to help minorities improve their lives by teaching them about investment opportunities.

It may sound like Valencia is just towing the company line. But in reality, he believes passionately in his mission. For Valencia, work holds both professional and personal meaning.

“Every morning, I wake up with a firm resolution that I have the opportunity to change someone’s life with financial tools,” says Valencia, 40. “I look at my job as a chance to build wealth in the Hispanic community, the African American community, the gay and lesbian community. I know my work can and will make a difference.”

Valencia knows well how hard families without financial resources work to make ends meet. Born in Marana, a little farming community outside Tucson, Arizona, he is the child of migrant farm workers. His grandparents from Tamaulipas, Mexico, also were migrant farm workers in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas.
In addition to working the fields, Valencia’s father, Ray, was a laborer for three decades in copper mines and a cement factory. His mother, Amada, was the first female deputy sheriff of Pima County. She required Valencia to work in the fields as a child so he would remember where he came from.

Indeed, Valencia followed in the family’s farming roots. In 1983, he became the first Latino president of Arizona’s Future Farmers of America (FFA). The post also helped him secure a scholarship to California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo, California, an investment that continues to pay Valencia dividends today.

Over the years Valencia has held a number of jobs. He started a nonprofit organization right after college to fund educational opportunities for children of migrant farm workers. Later, he was director of education at USA Today and then director of professional development for career and technical education for the state of Arizona. Valencia even took a turn as executive director of the FFA Alumni Association, an opportunity that brought him to Washington D.C., and enabled him to give back to an organization that enriched his youth.

All along, Valencia held his mission of improving lives close at heart, as he made contacts and built a reputation. By the early 1990s, ING Group had just the job for someone with Valencia’s experience. Valencia became vice president of ING’s Hispanic initiative in domestic emerging markets, and he put his experience in education to work by helping the company get in touch with the Hispanic community.

In that position, Valencia helped ING build relationships with such community organizations as the National Association of Latino Elected Officials and the Congressional Hispanic Caucus. Valencia also recommended that ING publish material in Spanish and hire more Spanish speakers for customer service, marketing, and sales positions.

Valencia’s work was so effective that by October 2004, he became senior vice president of domestic emerging markets, an area that includes African Americans, Asians, women, gays, lesbians, and transgender people as well as Hispanics. Valencia is now the highest-ranking Hispanic at one of the 20 largest financial institutions in the world.

ING offers banking, insurance and asset management to more than 60 million private, corporate and institutional clients in more than 60 countries. The company has more than 112,000 employees with a parent company in Amsterdam and U.S. headquarters in Atlanta. In the United States, ING has 10 major offices and smaller outposts, such as the one where Valencia works in Washington, D.C. Valencia’s work focuses on selling retirement plans, life insurance, mutual funds and annuities to minorities.

“Ricardo has a very clear passion for what he does and for trying to help the company grow in the segments of the population where the company wants to grow,” says Jacques de Vaucleroy, ING group president of U.S. retail financial services. “Clearly he has a lot of experience, and he knows the community. What makes the difference is his passion. This is more than a job for him. It’s a life.”