Tyler HBA Latina Expo highlights success stories, inspiring hundreds of women | Business

Hundreds of Latina women gathered in Tyler on Saturday for the Tyler Hispanic Business Alliance’s annual Latina Leadership Conference and Business Expo.

The event came about to celebrate and inspire Latina and Hispanic women in the East Texas community.

“I was reading about how Latina women were outpacing any other demographic group when it came to entrepreneurship,” Tyler HBA President and CEO Nancy Rangel said. “A lot of them were starting up their own businesses, their own companies, and they had that entrepreneurial spirit. One of the things that I brought up to the board at the time was that we have a group of women that are waiting to start businesses; how about we create a conference just for the Latina women, something that had never been done to the scale of the entire region?

“A lot of us had attended conferences in more of a religious area but we had never done anything to where it was for professional type of women. So that’s why we came about creating the Latina Leadership Conference and Business Expo.”

The expo itself started with only 50 women and now there were nearly 340 women in attendance at Saturday’s event, held at UT Tyler’s Soules College of Business. 

“It’s definitely grown throughout the years. UT Tyler has been with us since Day 1. They have always supported us as well as some of these main sponsors. They just believed in our mission and believed in this vision. To see it come into fruition is just amazing,” said Rangel.

Each year a different theme is portrayed in the Latina Expo. This year’s theme focused on women in media.

“There’s now this opportunity that we’ve never had before where we’ve had Latina women in so many areas of the media and we’ve never had that in the past. It was something that organically just happened. We have women in TV, but not just in the forefront but those that are behind the scenes making things happen. Same thing with radio, we have women that are on air and behind the scenes. It’s just been amazing to see that digital content which is something thats been added through out the years as technology has developed. Its been amazing to see all these women who serve in the media to celebrate them as a community, and that’s what we have been able to achieve,” said Rangel.

Rangel’s intent with the Latina Expo is to empower other women and bring them together.

“I like to serve our community,” she said. “That is one the things that I love to do and I’m very passionate about it. So I try my best to engage others. We’re all in our own little circles, and with our families, and to be able to bring people out of their circles and bring them to areas that they probably wouldn’t want to individually want to try to be engaged in, I like to draw people in — to bring them to the table, to be part of it.

“That’s one of the things is with Latinas, we thought about this event and we wanted to bring all these Latina women closer together — network together, get to know one another, so when we celebrate one another we all listen to each other’s stories. We all have a journey and that’s one of the things that’s part of our success, the stories make us to who we are today.”

Ivette Zavarce, who works at Fuzion Radio and served as a panelist at the expo, was excited to see the community together celebrating each other.

“Latina Expo is a great opportunity for many women, and community to get together to network and share experiences,” Zavarce said. “It’s a great time to enjoy together. I’ve been coming to Latina Expo for many years and every year it gets better. It’s good to learn about how entrepreneurs in the community are growing. It’s great to get together to learn how Hispanic and Latina women are having more opportunities in years. It’s a great opportunity to get to know other Latina women and see how they’re building our community. It’s so inspiring.”

Along with a panel of speakers, the expo also featured a fashion show and a raffle during which attendees could win prizes.

“When you put a group of women who have very similar stories or similar backgrounds, we all can learn from one another,” said Rangel. “One of the things I love seeing is to see women who are probably at the top tier of their career or their industry, and to see other women who are just starting out. To see that she’s willing to mentor others, it’s just amazing to see that.”

“There’s this Spanish saying ‘Sí, se puede’ (yes, you can) and we use it a lot and that’s been around for years for Hispanic culture,” said Rangel. “That’s one of the things that I want is for women to believe in themselves and they can make things happen. This is why they’re becoming entrepreneurs and leaders, and great management and just excelling in their industries. I want to be able to put all that together and get to know one another and it’s just amazing when you see that. You can see it happening in front of you at Latina Expo.”