Georgia Hispanic Chamber of Commerce CEO talks solutions for closing Latino wealth gap, supporting small businesses
![](https://www.wabe.org/app/uploads/news/npr-stories/dollar-499481_1920-1440x810.jpg)
Latino households in the United States earn just half the income as compared to white households while also having about a fifth as much net worth – and data from the Federal Reserve shows wealth inequality is growing.
On this edition of “Closer Look,” Georgia Hispanic Chamber of Commerce president and CEO Verónica Maldonado-Torres talks about what solutions she’d like to see in closing the widening wealth gap.
Maldonado-Torres leads one of the largest Hispanic chambers of commerce in the country, representing about a thousand members. She shared programs her chamber is working on to support entrepreneurs and how her upbringing influences her work to this day.
“It’s in every fiber of me. Growing up after school, going to our family business and seeing my mom, my grandmother, my grandfather, my uncle, my aunt working in this family business and trying to find a way,” Maldonado-Torres said. “All the toil and turmoil, that is what I live every day. And it actually is part of the reason why I feel so passionate about the work I do today to help small businesses.”