Miguel Gomez

When Miguel Gomez immigrated to El Paso, Texas, from Mexico in 2007 to work in the financial industry, he was surprised by what he found. He’d meet with Latino small business owners, and they had a lot to learn. “They’d have no idea about finances, or how to manage your money,” he said.

He started learning about the Latino wealth gap, and how Hispanic families are less likely to receive inheritances, own homes and have retirement accounts than white families. Seeing an opportunity to make an impact, he launched a podcast,  “Dinero en Espanol,” in 2014 to share simple lessons on finance and interview business leaders in Spanish. To date, the show has more than 600,000 downloads.

In addition, Gomez, who’s a wealth adviser with Lauterbach Financial Advisors in El Paso, has given dozens of financial literacy workshops to underserved audiences. And to promote diversity within the industry, in 2020 he served as president of the D&I Committee at XY Planning Network, an organization of fee-only financial advisers working with Generations X and Y.

“There’s many, many people whose first language is Spanish in the U.S.,” Gomez says. By meeting them where they are, he’s equipping them to make better financial decisions for the future.

— Kate Silver