
WHEN MARIA CONTRERAS-SWEET WALKED into a packed Los Angeles news conference some years back for the opening of a historic Hispanic bank, several reporters mistook the striking, elegantly attired woman for an anchor from Univision.
Others thought she might be the head of a Latina modeling agency and a client of the new bank.
One thing for sure: No one could take their eyes off her.
Even in a town full of incredibly gorgeous women, Contreras-Sweet stood out. Beautiful and dressed in an equisite designer suit, she literally had the room when she walked to the podium in a confident gait and said, “Good morning.”
Contreras-Sweet then introduced herself as no less than the founding chairwoman of ProAmérica Bank, the first Hispanic-formed commercial bank in California in over 35 years.
“Maria has a way of taking your breath away – with her beauty and her brains,” says former presidential aide Fernando Del Rio, a consultant in Southern California who has known Contreras-Sweet for much of her life. “She may be the smartest businesswoman in America.
“For that matter, she may be the smartest business-person in America.”
Contreras-Sweet got the same vote of confidence from President Barack Obama Wednesday when he nominated the first Latina to serve as a cabinet secretary in Califonia to head the Small Business Administration.
“I searched for an exceptional person with firsthand experience,” Obama said in introducing his nominee. “Someone who understands entrepreneurs and I know Maria knows the grueling hours, stress and self-doubt that it can sometimes take to start a small business, although I haven’t seen any self-doubt in Maria…
“Maria knows the challenges working families are facing. I’m absolutely confident she will succeed in this position.”
Hispanic leaders were quick to praise the nomination.
“Maria has a lot of strength because she works in corporate America,” says former Labor Secretary Hilda Solis. “This is the new Latina leadership.”
Former SBA Administration Hector Barreto, chair of the Latino Coalition called the appointment “a vital component to the lasting health of our nation’s economy.”
“Maria Contreras-Sweet will be a positive addition to an agency that is fundamental to small business. Her corporate, government and small business banking experience will serve to cultivate and sustain new business opportunities and renew growth among the engine of our economy.”
If confirmed, she succeeds Karen Mills who left last August and joins Labor Secretary Thomas Perez as the only two Hispanics on Obama’s second term cabinet.
Contreras-Sweet, 58, is a Democrat, but she has always had support from both parties – even in California with its recalcitrant GOP — and is not expected to have trouble getting confirmed by the Senate.
Jeff Brown of Pepsi recalls the time when soft-drink makers who were all represented by men in California — except Contreras-Sweet with 7-Up — were trying to were strategizing in a room about how they needed to lobby the office of Gov. Pete Wilson, a conservative Republican, for help on a measure.
“Maria Contreras-Sweet came back and said, ‘Oh, I just had tea with the governor’s staff, and they said there’d be no problem.’
“People like Maria.”
Especially Latinas who know her story.
She emigrated to California from Guadalajara, Mexico, in 1960 when she was five with her mother and five siblings, growing up a voracious reader, especially of Emily Bronte classics, as she perfected her English and becoming a billboard of the American Dream at a time when women were barely breaking into the higher echelons of the corporate world.
Then, when she could have focused on her own rise, she turned her attention in 1989 to forming HOPE — Hispanas Organized for Political Equality – to promote Latinas and their issues in what had previously been an all-boys Latino political network.
One day, she said, she saw herself perched in her corporate world and wondered if she shouldn’t be doing more for other Latinas.
“So I’m sitting here saying, ‘I’m a Latina. I’ve been blessed in my life. I’m happily married. I have great kids. I have a company that really supports my work, and I work well,’” she recalled.
“What can I do to put it all together? I wanted to see a Latina organization thrive because Latinas are really low in terms of income, attainment of education, (the) glass ceiling.”
Today, HOPE is the most powerful Latina political organization in California, where it has expanded statewide after its modest start in Southern California.
And it didn’t slow Contreras-Sweet down a single step as she has become a member of numerous influential boards, from helping rebuild Los Angeles after the 1992 race riots to Childrens Hospital of Los Angeles and the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce.
Today she is also an equity owner in 7-Up.
What drove her, she says was an inner drive and her mother.
“My mother instilled in me the notion that there’s more power in empowering (people) to do things, build things,” she says.
“She believed in the American Dream and she knew that this would be a place where her daughter could do some special things.”