Monika Mantilla, honored as Ambassador for The Alumni Society
When corporate board members sit down for a presentation, Monika Mantilla is rarely the person they expect to see. Knowing that hasn’t stopped her.
“I’ve been told by board members of Fortune 50 companies, ‘You’re the first Latina to ever present to us in the investment arena,’” she says. “There are a lot of roads that [Latinos] still need to travel, and there are a lot of networks that we need to build in the financial industry. At times you find biases and stereotypes that [suggest] you don’t fit the mold, but the mold is changing. We’re changing it. So I feel very comfortable being an agent of change.”
Mantilla, president and CEO of New York-based Altura Capital Group, is working to increase access to capital, thus changing the financial landscape for Latinos nationwide. Her firm focuses on small entrepreneurial money managers and emerging domestic markets, specifically areas of investment opportunity that arise from changing demographics.
Recently, Altura cocreated an impact debt fund for small businesses. “Capital is the blood of our economic system,”...