Latinos Can Lead, Says Former Cabinet Member

Carlos Gutierrez
Carlos Gutierrez

SPRINGDALE -- Latinos need to focus more on entering the mainstream and aspiring to leadership of businesses and communities, a former U.S. cabinet official told an audience in Springdale.

"Our conversations tend to be about representation: How many of us are on boards of directors or are executives," said Carlos Gutierrez, who was U.S. Secretary of Commerce in the George W. Bush administration. "We need to set our sights on a new mission; Not to be present or represented, but to lead."

At A Glance (w/photo)

Gutierrez’ Bio

Gutierrez was born in Havana, the son of a pineapple plantation owner. As a successful businessman, his father was deemed an enemy of the state by Fidel Castro and Gutierrez’ family fled to Miami in 1960. When it became apparent they would not be going home, Gutierrez’s father accepted a position with the Heinz Company in Mexico and later started his own business. Gutierrez studied business administration at the Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Education in Queretaro, Mexico.

Source: U.S. Department of Commerce

Gutierrez spoke at the 14th annual conference of the Hispanic Women's Organization of Arkansas, which was held at the Jones Center in Springdale. The former secretary was the featured speaker to the 286 people who attended the conference, including Springdale Mayor Doug Sprouse, Rogers Mayor Greg Hines, Washington County Judge Marilyn Edwards and University of Arkansas Chancellor David Gearhart.

Mike Malone of Fayetteville, executive director of the Northwest Arkansas Council, received the Hispanic Women's Community of Excellence Award. The honor recognizes an individual in the community whose leadership promotes advancement for all." The council is an association of the regions business, government and community leaders.

Gutierrez, whose family emigrated to the U.S. from Cuba in his childhood, was chief of Kellogg Co. operations in Mexico for five years. He then sought a change and told a fellow executive at the company he wanted to run "an Anglo market" such as North America or Australia.

"He was kind of surprised, asking if I didn't want to be vice-president of our Latin American operations. We kept talking and he kept asking that."

"What I didn't get until after the conversation is that he didn't really think that, as a Latino, I could lead Anglos," Gutierrez said. "And we often play it safe and become 'the Latino guy.'"

Gutierrez persisted and later became the president and CEO of the company. At one time, he was the only Latino president of a Fortune 500 corporation. He's now chairman of the Albright Stonebridge Group, a consulting firm founded in part by Madeline Albright, formerly the secretary of state during the Bill Clinton administration. Gutierrez is known for being active in efforts to reform immigration law.

"You face twice the problem: Can Latino women lead Anglo men?" Gutierrez said. "Yes you can. You can lead people who are different than you are. And the team you lead will be stronger than a team where everybody is the same."

"You need diversity, not because it's fashionable or because you're supposed to have diversity," he said. You need it because it will make your company or operation better, he said.

Gutierrez' message was particularly relevant to Latino college student, Gearhart said. Gearhart has supported in-state tuition for student who were brought to the U.S. as children and grew up in Arkansas but whose immigration status remains unsettled.

"We want to make them leaders, and his remarks spoke very much too that," Gearhart said.

Edwards, a woman in a leadership position, said she appreciated the former secretary's remarks but thought they could have been even stronger. Women face obstacles to gaining leadership roles Gutierrez acknowledged but didn't emphasize enough, she said.

After the speech, the former secretary said the U.S. has become attractive to international investors again for a number of reasons. International investment in the United States dropped after the 2008 financial crisis, both in dollar amounts and relative to other nations, he said. "For four or five years, there was a perception we had lost our stride," he said.

The U.S. economy weathered the crisis much better than many other economies, particularly Europe's. The natural gas and oil from shale has boomed, providing abundant energy here, he said. Also, the U.S. economy's underlying strengths, such as rule of law and our stable business environment, never went away.

NW News on 09/20/2014

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