Lynn Jimenez: Se Habla Dinero

 

The second week of February, Women's Initiative hosted a Latina Leadership Luncheon. Our keynote speaker was Lynn Jimenez of KGO Radio. We thought her speech was so great we wanted to share it with you!
Here's an excerpt:

Respect is something I had to earn when I became KGO radio’s business reporter. KGO 810 am, is a news and talk radio station. It’s been number one for more than 28 years. Every morning I give reports on the market, the cost of money, housing, jobs, local firms, and pocketbook issues.  

When I used to listen to business reports, if I wasn’t bored—I was lost. I felt stupid. I didn’t understand the code words or how the reports applied to me. So when I took this job, I vowed I didn’t want anyone to feel bored or stupid when they listened to my reports. Which is why I go beyond the numbers.  

So..every morning very early, I skid onto the options floor of the NYSE, go through wires, newspapers, faxes, the internet…touch bases with one or two of my experts, write my reports and then go on the air. You may think that’s a lot of effort for one minute of business news each half hour. But it’s critical to put facts into context and to write clearly. It’s also a tribute to KGO radio that it believes money news and local business news is important enough for that kind of investment.  

... At some point, after 17 years as a business reporter I realized it was time to use what I had learned to invest in the future. And the numbers spoke to me. What numbers? Try these. There are 44 million Hispanics in the U.S.—more Hispanics live in the United States than Canadians live in Canada. We are the fastest growing ethnic group in the nation. Right now Latinos make up a third of California’s population, and by 2042 we will be the majority.  

... There are more than 2 million Hispanic-owned businesses in the U.S. One third of them are owned by Latinas. The majority are one or two person operations, but the rest provide jobs to the economy. Those firms both buy products and services, and provide them. Corporate America will increasingly depend on Hispanics not only as consumers, but as workers.  

The average age in the U.S. is 36.4 years. Among Latinos, it’s 27.4 years. That means as the Boomers leave the workforce, many of their replacements will be Latinos. ... Hispanic Boomers who are U.S.-born and speak primarily English use education to further themselves, while those who use both English and Spanish tend to further themselves by being entrepreneurial.  

We are making lots of progress—but we would make more progress if we, as a community, were better educated and better educated financially. Even though we are 14 percent of the popuation, in 2002 the Tomas Rivera Policy Institute found just 7 percent of Hispanic students were enrolled at 4-year colleges. Just 12 percent of us have a bachelor’s degree, compared to 30 1/2 percent of non-Hispanic whites.  

This is happening because the cost of an education rises faster than wages rise each year. It’s happening because Latino families may not have experience with applying for college, or with the financial aid process. Sallie Mae reports more than half of Latino high school graduates say they received no financial aid information before graduating.  

And the relatively low percentage of us going onto higher education has a huge negative impact on our earning power. People without a college degree earn a million and a half dollars less over their lifetimes than college graduates …on average, the Pew Hispanic Center says Latino incomes are 2/3rds that of non-Hispanic white Americans.

You can download the complete speech by clicking on this link:

Download latina_luncheon_speech_jimenez.doc