This Is Cumbre: A Love Letter to My Community

Querida comunidad,

This one is a love letter.

I just returned from Avance Global (AVANCE Global 2026) and Thrive & Lead, surrounded by thousands of Latino leaders, founders, executives, investors, artists, advocates, allies, and dreamers. I walked into those rooms tired. I walked out remembering who we are, what we are building, and how much power we hold when we come together.

This past year tested many of us. Partners sat across from me and suggested that even the word “Latino” had become too risky to keep.

I listened. I considered it. And I refused.

Latino is not a marketing strategy. We didn’t add it when it was popular, and we won’t remove it when the climate shifts. It is part of who I am, who we are, and who we are becoming.

That decision cost us. I would make it again.

And then we did the only thing that ever answers a moment like that one.

We kept building.

Why We Say Cumbre

Cumbre means summit, and I have always loved that the word carries two meanings.

The first is the summit inside each of us: reaching our potential, building the business, taking the seat, creating wealth, deciding for ourselves how high we climb.

The second is a gathering. A summit brings people together around a shared purpose.

Put those meanings together and you get everything I believe about our future: individual ambition strengthened by collective power.

Our progress cannot only mean moving more Latinos to the top. It has to mean what we build once we get there, who we bring with us, and what becomes possible for the people coming next.

That is cumbre. And last week, I saw it everywhere.

The Data Tells Part of the Story

If you have read Cumbre Mindset before, you know I usually open with numbers. This year they are extraordinary.

The U.S. Latino economy reached $4.4 trillion, which makes it the fourth-largest economy in the world and the fastest growing among the largest. We drove 28.2% of all U.S. economic growth in 2024 while making up roughly one-fifth of the population. Our household consumption is expanding nearly three times faster than the rest of the country’s.

And we received less than 2% of all venture funding in 2025.

Those numbers matter. They show both the scale of what we are creating and the size of the gap still in front of us.

But this Hispanic Heritage Month, I keep returning to something the numbers cannot hold.

Data measures our growth. It cannot measure the people creating it.

And cumbre has always been about people.

The People Who Build the Rooms

Power starts with people willing to create space for other people.

Gary Acosta brought thousands of Latinos together through Avance Global. Patty Arvielo and Vanessa Santos built Thrive & Lead, gathering Latina founders, executives, investors, and leaders with real intention behind every connection and conversation.

That matters, especially now.

They built rooms big enough to hold all of us: our ambition and our culture, our businesses and our stories, our joy and our fear.

We underestimate what happens when people come together. Relationships create opportunity. Networks move information and open doors. Proximity to people who are building, leading, investing, and dreaming bigger changes what we believe we can do ourselves.

Building the room is often how you begin building power. Because when we gather, we don’t just trade business cards. We trade ideas, relationships, capital, confidence, and hope.

Creating the room so others can rise is cumbre.

And the room is only the beginning.

The Conversation We Finally Had Out Loud

I spent part of the week on a wealth creation panel with Patty Rodriguez of Lil’ Libros (Lil’ Libros – Bilingual Books for Children English & Spanish) and Sky Gaven of Gaventura, founders who built companies out of culture and talk about money without flinching.

I went in with one point I needed to land. Not a list, not a framework. One sentence I wanted every person in that room to carry out with them:

Wealth in this country was designed by intention. It is time we are just as intentional about building our own.

I say that because the wealth gap was never an accident. Policy built it. Redlining, exclusion from the GI Bill, lending practices, and generations of rules decided who could own, who could borrow, and who could pass something down. Someone designed that outcome on purpose.

So we cannot close it by accident, by working hard and hoping the math eventually turns in our favor.

We close it the same way it was created. On purpose.

That means owning instead of only earning. Building equity, not only income. Buying companies, not just starting them. Moving capital to each other. Talking openly about money in our families, because silence has never protected anyone.

Many of us were raised to work hard and stay grateful. Nobody taught us to ask what we own.

Intention is cumbre.

The People Building Something Bigger

I met founders who reminded me why entrepreneurship matters far beyond a balance sheet.

Rebecca Alvarez Story built Bloomi (Bloomi: Clean, plant-based intimacy essentials) in a category people still whisper about, fighting for shelf space, capital, credibility, and a different conversation about women’s intimate health. Sandra Velasquez built Nopalera (NOPALERA – Modern Mexican Beauty) around the nopal, a plant generations of our families know intimately, and carried it unapologetically into the marketplace. Cindy Castro creates designs that stop you in your tracks, with her culture living inside the brand rather than sitting politely beside it.

Different women. Different industries. Different stories. I saw the same thing in each of them.

They did not shed their culture to build something bigger. Their culture made the vision bigger.

For generations, success came with an unspoken instruction: assimilate, fit in, make yourself legible to the room you want to enter.

These founders wrote a different instruction. They build companies, brands, and assets while telling their own stories and widening the path behind them.

Building something bigger without becoming smaller is cumbre.

The People Opening Doors

I saw that same power in women changing sports.

MJ Acosta-Ruiz built a national platform and a voice in an industry where almost no one who looked like her had either. Erika Ruiz broke through as the first Latina agent at one of the most powerful agencies in sports.

Celebrating a “first” is complicated. It marks real progress, and it also measures how long a door stayed shut and how much talent we lost while it did.

So being first cannot only mean arriving. The power comes from making a second possible, then a tenth, until we finally stop counting.

Reaching your summit and opening the path behind you is cumbre.

The People Building Community

That spirit reaches far beyond founders and firsts.

Everywhere I turned, artists told our stories, executives moved institutions, investors moved capital, and founders created jobs. Leaders like Refugio A. Atilano, Sandra Noemi Torres, Ilhiana Rojas Saldana, Melanie Rodriguez, Kristin, Coleman, and so many others build organizations, networks, and communities around one conviction: Latino talent and ambition deserve investment.

Some build businesses. Others build movements, wealth, belonging, or institutions that will outlast them. They are creating things their parents could not have imagined and their children may one day take for granted.

That is how progress compounds. One person opens a door, another widens it, and eventually a generation walks through.

Building something that outlives you is cumbre.

The Power to Build What Comes Next

Somewhere in those rooms, I realized the story was not what these leaders had accomplished.

It was what they were making possible.

We can spend years reacting to the forces around us: who funds us, who recognizes us, who invites us in, who decides our work matters. Those forces carry real consequences. They do not get to set the boundaries of our ambition.

Our power lives in what we build. In the businesses we grow, the assets we own, the capital we move, the relationships we create, the stories we tell, and the doors we hold open.

That does not mean ignoring the barriers. It means refusing to let the barriers become the most interesting thing about us.

Creating what comes next is cumbre.

Our Heritage Is Still Being Written

That may be what sits with me most this Hispanic Heritage Month.

We usually frame heritage as something behind us, and so much behind us deserves honor: our families, our languages, our traditions, and the generations who built opportunities they never got to enjoy.

But heritage is not only what we inherit. It is also what we leave.

They thought they could bury us. They did not understand that we are seeds. Seeds of growth, of possibility, of community.

This past year felt like being pushed underground. Underground is where roots take hold.

This Is Cumbre

I walked into those rooms tired. I walked out ready to build.

Not one summit reserved for a few of us, but millions of summits, connected by something bigger.

We climb. We build. We bring others with us.

And then we build higher.

Con amor, Joelle