NAA: Making a difference
By Ruben Navarrette, Jr.

Regina Montoya is comfortable
around high achievers.
She ought to be. She fits the profile.

 

Montoya, an Albuquerque native, learned early to carve a place for herself among society’s success stories. She earned admission to and claimed her place among the nation’s top students at Wellesley College and Harvard Law School. After her blue-chip education, Montoya moved to Dallas to clerk for the legendary U.S. District Court Judge Sarah T. Hughes, one of the first women to sit on the federal bench.
In Dallas, Montoya built a law practice and a second career as a television host and commentator. In 2000, she made an unsuccessful bid for Congress. Prior to her candidacy, Montoya served as an assistant to President Bill Clinton and as director of the White House Office of Intergovernmental Affairs. She also represented the United States as a public delegate to the 53rd session of the United Nations General Assembly.
These days, many of the high-achievers Montoya associates with come by way of the New America Alliance, a nonprofit group whose mission is the development of wealth and opportunity in the Hispanic community.
The group’s membership list, which has just under 100 names on it, is a Hispanic social registry for the powerful and famous. Filmmaker Moctezuma Esparza is a member. So is former U.S. Housing Secretary Henry Cisneros. And Spanish-language radio magnate Tom Castro. Lawyer Roel Campos was a member until he joined the Securities and Exchange Commission and had to resign. Ditto for Hector Barreto who was, until recently, head of the Small Business Administration.
Montoya is the group’s CEO. It’s a post she has held for more than a year. Taking the job meant commuting from Dallas to Washington, where the organization is based.
The group’s various projects and initiatives are all aimed at empowering the Hispanic community—which, in turn, Montoya notes, benefits the rest of society because “the impact [of Hispanics] is so huge.”
She’s right, of course. That impact is being felt in everything from politics and publishing to pop culture. Much of it is tied to demographics. Hispanics are expected to account for one in four Americans by 2050.
It’s with the future in mind that, according to Montoya, the NAA is focused on building four things within the Hispanic community—economic capital, human capital, political capital and philanthropy.
With regard to the first item—economic capital—one of the group’s goals is to put some color on Wall Street. A 2003 study by the NAA found that Hispanics own only 30 asset management firms, five private equity firms and 15 brokerage firms. It also found that Hispanics are the majority owners or managers of only a handful of the country’s 9,000 banks and savings and loans.
“One of the things that we really want to do is shine the spotlight on the financial services industry,” she says. “We have to have the engagement of Latinos at all levels.”
Every October, the NAA organizes a Wall Street summit attended by members, corporate sponsors and MBA students. Participants meet with those who run investment firms and brokerage houses, with an eye toward helping future leaders break into the inner sanctum. For the companies, it’s an opportunity to build a workforce that—to borrow a phrase from a certain ex-president—looks like America.
To Montoya, it’s not just good business. It’s a matter of social justice.
“This is the United States of America,” she says. “You have to be able to create an infrastructure where people have an opportunity to give back.”
The organization also has initiatives to increase the number of Hispanics on corporate boards, as well as on the boards that oversee foundations and pension funds. In the political arena, the NAA has turned its attention to hot-button issues such as immigration, education, and healthcare. It is working with the UCLA School of Medicine to help increase the number of Spanish-speaking physicians, Montoya says.
Can these private efforts make a dent in society’s problems? The CEO has no doubt that they can.
“I know we’re making a difference,” she says. “And it’s not just for our own community, but for the community at large.”
I asked Montoya how she perceives the road ahead for young women—especially Latinas. She sees it as full of opportunities and short on obstacles, especially compared to what earlier generations of women faced.
“Sometimes younger women don’t realize the sacrifices that other women made before them, or the paths that have been opened to them,” she says. “They see all of this [opportunity] and there are so many avenues open to them, but they don’t realize that it wasn’t that long ago that some of those areas were much more difficult to access than they are now.”
Still, standing before a buffet table full of opportunities and choices, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed—even paralyzed. Her message to young people is simple: “You’ve got to prioritize and stay true to what’s important for you.”
It seems to be working for her. She’s already had one exciting ride. And she’s not through yet.

Ruben Navarrette is a member of the editorial board of the San Diego Union-Tribune, a nationally syndicated columnist with the Washington Post Writers Group and a frequent contributor to National Public Radio.