Maria Hinojosa.
Maria Hinojosa’s new book released today — Once I was You: A Memoir of Love and Hate In A Torn America — surprisingly and unrelentingly repeats a phrase so common to women entrepreneurs: “I’m not good enough.” A funny statement to come from a woman that many see as a pioneer and leader in the media industry, who has successfully proven the viability of the Latinx market while simultaneously staying true to her values. As the weekly anchor of LatinoUSA for over 25 years, she is a voice you may have heard — it’s memorable for how it inspires care and competence simultaneously; qualities often held by entrepreneurial women.
As an investor I was curious to hear her reflections on the US Latinx marketplace, and her experience as an entrepreneur — particularly one with many intersectional identities — getting over her fears to ultimately build big things as leader of Futuro Media.
Financially, the Latinx market is often overlooked — and is largely where you’ve made your mark. Can you share more about Futuro Media, as well as the size and character of the market you serve?
When it comes to the Latino/Latina consumer market, investor market, new business, small business, international business, women owned business... I’m just kind of taken aback that there isn’t more massive investment. Because my understanding about basic economics is that when you see a growing market, you’re going to go towards that market. So the data shows that Latinos — specifically, young Latinas — are the most brand-loyal consumers. We over-index white and Black women in deciding what we are going to buy for our households. No matter if we are in Alabama or Anchorage, we’ll go to a supermarket and spot Latino products, like cleaning products that have certain smells that take people back to their childhoods. There is a brand loyalty and consumer confidence that we have.
So, it surprises me that there isn’t more active investment here. Whether it's advertisers or CEOs or investors in the Latino market, we have to sing our own praises and ring the bells and whistles for business folks to see this, even though the data so clearly shows how robust we are. The way it feels to the population is that just like politics, they only pay attention when it's convenient.
I've been speaking with investors for 10 years. It's interesting that they saw my vision and said “isn’t that nice, isn’t that sweet.” “She's running a non-profit. It's based on journalism.” And immediately we were cast aside as a non-profit. But those same investors who said they wanted to tap into the Latino or Latina market would go invest in a Latino media property that had no authentic connection or deep roots or integrity or connection to the community. We saw several of them go bang and then bust.
With Futuro Media there hasn't been a bang and a bust. We are launching other wings within Futuro Media that will take it beyond a non-profit. For instance, we desperately need more investigative reporting about Latinos and Latinas because we are trying to deconstruct something called structural racism. But for investors and business people what's the other side of deconstructing racism? Putting on my capitalist hat — people who feel good about their society and future are going to buy things. I have not been doing a lot of shopping since the pandemic but I did go to a big box store in East Harlem, Spanish Harlem, in New York. That used to be where white folks would avoid, thinking it was dangerous — it's not — but you know who was shopping there? That place was packed with Brown and Black people buying up the store. So when I think of essential workers I think of the other side of the equation: essential consumers who are keeping the economy going. We have big families, we have families to feed, we like to cook and take care of our families especially as women, so having a stocked refrigerator if we’re lucky enough is something we want to do. It serves both us and those companies.
It’s true — in the pandemic it’s been confirmed that wealthy people are spending less, while poorer communities are spending more.
Yes and investors have their heads in the sand. Imagine if Covid benefits were expanded to immigrants and undocumented workers? It would've been an immediate infusion into the consumer market, period. There is data that shows those dollars would’ve rushed in and brought up the entire economy. What’s wrong is we are fighting against a political narrative created by the administration — in large part to attack this community and deny undocumented immigrants benefits, many of them Latinos working in essential businesses like farms and meat processing plants. You’re hurting your own economy.
I get very frustrated because while I don’t consider myself a business woman, I don’t get why a business person would support an administration that comes and raids your company like the poultry plants, where we just did a documentary about the lingering effects of immigration raids. Are your poultry processing plants actively supporting this administration? Then you’re hurting your own business. Unless you care so little about people around you that you don't care about the raids, because you know you can replenish your team with more immigrant workers.
Intersectionality is key to your story, and particularly your experience as a Latina woman entrepreneur. Can you speak to how these two elements of your identity have impacted your choices and opportunities?
I've been interviewed by Latina journalists whose jaws drop. “Were you really the very first one in that newsroom?” The answer that I have is that I understand that I have privilege. My father was not wealthy, he was a medical researcher, and despite being a part of the team that created the cochlear implant never received economic benefit for it, it wasn’t his objective. He lived grant to grant, but was still a doctor, and what it allowed me to understand was that I did have privilege. I went to the University of Chicago high school where Barack Obama would have eventually sent his kids if he had stayed in Chicago. I had a “come to Jesus” moment. I may have been terrified of being the first: I’m a woman, I’m Latina, I’m tiny at five feet tall. So I basically had to talk myself down from the fear and understand that my privilege, however minimal it may have been, afforded me responsibility.
So I was responsible to force myself to speak up in those editorial meetings. Like, force myself. I’m a boxer now and I understand dodging and weaving. And back then I had to dodge and weave racism and sexism everyday. I was just so thankful to be working and to be in those newsrooms and to be able to say “What about this?” But I was always perceived with a certain level of suspicion because I was born in Mexico, people thought I had some kind of an agenda, like a “Latino agenda,” which was unbelievably offensive. As a journalist, your agenda is the truth and perhaps to touch people with your reporting, nothing more. So for me as a woman in journalism as the first you have to toughen up all the time. Hopefully you have a best friend, husband, partner or therapist to vent to. Joy Reid of MSNBC recently called me a warrior. It's a beautiful thing to be called, but you shouldn't have to be a warrior to succeed in the world of journalism — you should just be a journalist.
What pushes me to create Futuro is a very immigrant reality. We are painted by this administration as people who come here to take from the government. Which one, if you’re undocumented you can’t, fraud is impossible at this point. But it's also the ethos. The reason I created Futuro was because I was told by an important investigative news firm to come back when one of the white anchors dies, and the thought of having to tell my father that I would’ve had to apply for unemployment, I couldn’t imagine that shame. It was the immigrant thing in me that would not let me do that. That led me to create my company. We are always having to take the lemon and turn it into lemonade.
Here’s one thing I’ve learned from the world of capitalism. I’m not planning on selling my company. Nope. I’ve seen it too many times, we are so appetizing because we are lean, mean, solid, but I have no interest in being bought out. Investing, being your partner, working with us to grow, sure. But us being bought out? That would lead us to disappear, and that can’t happen.
You’ve been incredibly successful throughout and yet, there’s a line you repeat several times in the book: “I'm not good enough.” As a woman entrepreneur myself this is something I really relate to. Can you share more about where this comes from, and why was it so persistent?
"Once I Was You: A Memoir of Love and Hate in a Torn America" released today.
When I started seeing a new therapist five or six years ago and we were doing some deeper work she asked me what's the first memory of a traumatic experience. I remembered being six years old and watching when George Wallace and Nixon were running for president, and I didn't understand “law and order” messaging, but what I did understand was that I was scared. If George Wallace won I was looking for a basement to hide in.
That’s something I’m obsessed about now. Wow, I was feeling that as a six year old. We didn't have cable or 24 hour news channels and somehow I was already picked up being othered. Maybe it starts there.
I also understood questions of class: we were fine, but I had friends who lived in pretty big houses and had second homes or third homes, hearing about Aspen and being like “What’s that?” Not speaking English as my first language — I was proud of speaking Spanish but it took me longer to read. I internalized these things as not good enough. Standardized tests are my terror. So there were a number of things reinforcing my lack of confidence. But with parents as professionals — my dad as a medical doctor, my mom a social worker, there were high expectations on us that pushed us through.
The persistence of feeling not good enough was “You’re going to still be the only one.” At a women's college I felt more secure, but then I moved into a field where there was truly no one like me. I’m not the kid who dreamed of being a journalist at age six because no journalists looked like me or any person of color. Invisibility means that you internalize it. It wasn’t until I heard a lecture from the President of the California Endowment: he shared there’s been scientific proof that invisibility is actually bad for your mental health. There are consequences. That’s why I write very openly about imposter syndrome. It's an everyday battle and you have to fortify yourself.
At the same time your book is full of moments of inspiring courage — like your persistence in calling the NPR producers and showing up at their offices in New York simply to show a presence before you actually had a job there. It seems like you knew you belonged at some fundamental level, and expected others to eventually catch up. Is that a fair characterization, and if so, where did that sense of grounding come from?
I have to pause before answering, because my sense of belonging has shifted recently. This is not where I expected to be at this point in my career or life as an American citizen, who chose to become an American citizen. I am processing the fact that we are tipping very clearly towards authoritarianism, towards a kind of desperation, and that much of this is being pushed on a narrative that Latinos and Latinas are in these caravans that are trying to break through the so-called wall and take over everything.
For me, the truth is I’m having to battle that everyday in one way or another. Sometimes it's on Twitter or Instagram, sometimes it's just a headline. The grounding comes from the fact that at the end of the day, I AM an American citizen. I am very lucky that I live steps away from a statue of Frederick Douglass, my founding father as it were. He went from slavery to being the first Black publisher of a newspaper. That’s my grounding. I’ll be like, coño, if Frederick Douglass could do this, I can. If Harriet Tubman could have a liberation dream — little Harriet Tubman who was about my height — doing 90 miles by foot several times over the span of a year, I can do this. So when I understood that the role of a responsible journalist is tied to correcting the narrative of American history in real time — that’s what keeps me grounded.
And it's not about my personal success. When you look at the data Latinos and Asians are the fastest growing demographic in the US. We need this community to be strong, financially and emotionally, because if we are strong the US economy and democracy will be too.
I know you also work extensively with young people. What’s your sense from the younger generation of how they are thinking about their place and power in the economy? Is there advice you give them that you would’ve given your younger self?
I’m the inaugural Distinguished Journalist in Residence in the English Department at Barnard, and I spend a lot of time telling students about their power. “You all are badass consumers and contributors! Empirically, you’re economic powerhouses!” But still it's work for them to believe they have this kind of power. And these are top students. I was a Fellow at Harvard last year and had Ivy League students asking me, “hmm… am I good enough?”
So I just feel like I have to embody this rootedness. This kind of self that exudes power. I’m an older woman, but I’m out there boxing, and claiming my space, and doing this so others get a space too. And now look at who is the most interesting and powerful and visible politician — Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. I reached out to interview her and she said “Oh my god I can’t believe you’re reaching out! You led the way here.” So there is another generation that is getting it.
When the whole corporate conversation about “lean in” came — I was hesitant. Leaning in sometimes we get slapped back. And that's not a good feeling. So we have to keep on slow, determining, one foot in front of the other. We would lean in and be pushed back and that’s more complicated for Latinas.
Any final thoughts for women similarly interested in breaking out as entrepreneurs?
There were so many hours of living on the verge of panic and anxiety when I first started the company. And what I did is I asked every woman entrepreneur, “how do you do this when it gets really scary? How do you get through?” So I actively collected stories. And one of the most simple and poignant messages a Latina running an important company she created gave me was, “it's like when you’re scuba diving. You just never stop breathing.” It was the silliest advice I’ve ever heard. Like, c’mon. But it stuck with me, there was something simple about it. My husband always said, even if your company “only” lasts five years, see it as a success that you lasted five years. See it as a positive. But also this notion that it's not life or death, it's just running a company and producing great journalism, but if you're feeling a challenge with cash flow it doesn't mean you’re suddenly poor, you’re just having a cash flow problem and it's going to get fixed, you have to breathe through it.
I feel like we need more bootcamps for women, Latina, immigrant entrepreneurs because it's not that every business has to scale up, but I'd like us to operate knowing we actually know what's going on. We actually get this. So the notion that we aren’t good enough needs to go.
Don’t give up. Don’t stop breathing.
Thanks to Jasmine Rashid for her contributions to this piece. Full disclosures related to my work available here. This post does not constitute investment, tax, or legal advice, and the author is not responsible for any actions taken based on the information provided herein.
