Strengthening Milwaukee\u2019s Hispanic community & economy

The Hispanic Collaborative launched in January with a focus on growing employment, entrepreneurship and civic engagement among members of the Milwaukee Region’s Hispanic community. Nancy Hernandez, president and founder of Milwaukee-based Abrazo Marketing, is serving as president of the the initiative. She sat down for a Q and A with Milwaukee Commerce.

We’re tied at the hip. without creating level footing for Milwaukee’s Hispanic community, our region endangers its future economic prosperity.

Nancy Hernandez

Milwaukee Commerce: How would you describe the Hispanic Collaborative?

Nancy Hernandez: The Hispanic Collaborative is an initiative that is aimed at moving Hispanic Milwaukee into the top-10 in the Hispanic well-being index. That involves variables of education, income, overall health and other aspects.

The index was commissioned here by the Hispanic community through funding from the Greater Milwaukee Foundation to understand how greater Milwaukee compares to other Hispanic communities — and where, really, were areas for improvement? That was done by the UW-Milwaukee Center for Urban Studies.

We are 39th on the overall list of 50. There’s a lot of room to move up.

MC: What are your overall goals for the Hispanic Collaborative?

NH: We’re really approaching this with an outcomes perspective in mind. Rather than guess on where our areas of focus should be, we went back to the researchers and asked them to look at this mathematically. Where can we get the most bang for our buck? Our first areas of focus is creating upward mobility. We have high levels of the population working, but are still stuck in the cycle of poverty. We need to move folks from $10-12 per hour jobs, upskilling them so they’re able to be at $20, $25 an hour jobs.

The second focus is entrepreneurism. Milwaukee is at the very bottom of that list in the 50-metro comparison. Hispanics nationally are still the top demographic for starting new businesses – one and a half times more likely than any other demo. Hispanics here in Milwaukee are not materialistically different than Hispanics anywhere else. That’s a nut that we need to crack. It’s good for jobs, income, wages and tax base — but it also would add leadership to our community.

The third focus is civic participation. Voter turnout, which the Hispanic community does very poorly here, is one of those correlating variables.

MC: You announced this effort in January. What’s been happening since then?

NH: These three efforts will move forward very much the way this came together: with the community, in community working groups. So right now, we are aligning community members who want to participate in that – and, by the way, you don’t have to be Hispanic to participate.

MC: This isn’t just a oneway street, right? If we improve conditions for Milwaukee’s Hispanic population, it benefits our whole region.

NH: Absolutely. The Hispanic population has been responsible for 100 percent of the job growth and 100 percent of the population growth in Milwaukee. They are also a demographic that is about 10 years younger than any other demographic. You combine those two things, this population is going to continue to fill that pipeline. This effort is how we help put them on their best footing, so they can fulfill on the momentum that could be created by sheer numbers. Now let’s arm those numbers with a more economically stable footing, better education, better jobs, better participation civically. And now we’ve got something where 2 plus 2 can equal 8 for everybody in the region.

I think the important piece for the broader community to understand is, we’re tied at the hip, without creating level footing for Milwaukee’s Hispanic community, our region endangers its future economic prosperity.

MC: Our business community is facing a shortage of talented employees, and that’s projected to become even more challenging. How can more businesses better connect with the Hispanic population?

NH: There are definitely businesses that make more inroads with the Hispanic population, that have stronger ties to those communities, that have a more open pipeline for recruiting and communication and creating awareness. But awareness of these positions is just one piece of the puzzle, right? The education, skills and training needed to fill those positions is another piece. We’re dealing with large, young households. There isn’t a lot of generational experience behind upskilling and moving into these types of positions. And they are multi-generational, multi-lingual, so there are a lot of logistics around somebody contemplating a career change.

There’s also a cultural component. We are a community that values what we have today. From my standpoint, I came back here after two years of college for an internship before going back to school to finish up my bachelor’s. My internship at that time paid $9 or $10 an hour, which was a good wage for a young kid. I heard from my parents at that point, very well intentioned, ‘If you didn’t want to go back to school, that’s a really good wage to hold on to.’ So sometimes you don’t know what you don’t know.

It’s also a prideful culture, so the idea of leveraging outside resources, programs, etc. isn’t necessarily natural.

MC: You have a successful marketing agency here, but you’ve stepped away from the day-today operations to focus on this. Why was this important enough for you to do that?

NH: Sometimes it’s really good to have the opportunity to do something bigger than yourself. And there’s a strong need for this now. I have experience in startups, both in for-profit and the nonprofit space. I’m in a position with my business where I can do this, and I’m happy to wear this hat right now.

MC: How is the MMAC supporting this effort?

NH: MMAC is fantastic. One of the things we did in our research was look at other cities that are more successful in terms of Hispanic outcomes, and consider, is there some “secret sauce” that we can pull from? As we looked at entities that were really moving some needles, what we heard was a lot of collaboration with broader regional efforts and initiatives. MMAC was a perfect organization for us to approach, given the economic prosperity lift, which is predominantly what we’re trying to do.

MC: How can someone get involved?

NH: Visit mkehc.com. to sign up for our email list. There are ways to get involved with each of our committees. You don’t have to be Hispanic or have a certain job title. We really need the whole community to be a part of this.