She Went from Running Banks...to Sweeping Floors

On this episode of Our American Stories, ...and then running her own business and helping others find work! Suazo Center founder Gladys Gonzalez shares how her American Dream began by losing her job running banks in Colombia to cleaning floors in America!

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:10):
And we continue here with our American stories. And now
it's time for one of our favorite recurring segments, our
American Dreamers series, which is brought to us by the
great folks at Job Creators Network. And they're working hard
in Washington, d C. And state capitals across this country,
trying to work for policies that help small business owners
become bigger business owners and get their part of the

(00:32):
American dream. And now we bring you a powerful immigrant story.

Speaker 2 (00:40):
My name is Gladys Gonzalez and I was born and
raised in Bogota, Colombia. My life hasn't been easy and
maybe because of that I learn in many lessons. I
have learned that life can change from night to day

(01:01):
for better or for wars, like it happened to me
when I was working in Colombia, and I was so
happy there. I had a VP position a bank with
headquarters in New York. At the time of the Drug
Dealers War in ninety one, the first drug dealer had

(01:25):
to come to these states.

Speaker 3 (01:28):
In X tradition, our view is the right approach is
to bring to justice narcotics traffickers, to coordinate and cooperate
as best as we can with Columbia.

Speaker 2 (01:39):
The drug dealers said, for every drug dealer that you
sent to the United States, we are going to kill
seven Americans or people that works for Americans. And at
that point the bank decided to close business in Colombia.
I had working for them already nine years. It was

(02:03):
an i life. My salary was in dollars, so I
had a very good life. I had time to share
with my family. It was beautiful, but unfortunately I had
to leave the country, so I decided to move to Utah.

(02:25):
I really had a hard life in the United States.
At the beginning, I had this hope that because I
was executive in an American bank in Colombia, I will
be able to get a good job soon here. But
it didn't happen. I didn't have an NBA, I didn't

(02:48):
have a title from the United States, only from Colombia.
So I ended up cleaning floors, and for that I
was very qualify. I started from the very bottom of
the ladder. I had three jobs at the same time.

(03:11):
One of my jobs was taking care of people with disabilities.
When I was finished with that job, I would go
to my second job, that was to clean offices. Then
I will go home to sleep for a couple of
hours and get up the next day to start my

(03:32):
routine again. On Saturdays, I had my third job, delivering
bondles of newspapers to kids careers so they could drop
the newspapers in the nerboffoods. I learned first hand how
hard the life of an immigrant could be. Many times

(03:59):
I remember my kids telling me, Mom, what would have
been worse for us to stay in our country facing
the drug dealers and Geria work or moving to USA
to face this tough life. And I will tell them,

(04:25):
don't worry, will make our way out of this someday,
we just need to be patient. I got to the
conclusion that only having a business I will be able

(04:47):
to succeed, and I started looking what type of business
I could have that will help me to succeed. So
I started by what is not available in Utah, and
I thought, hmm, there is no Hispanic newspaper here, so

(05:11):
probably that's what I'm gonna do. So I just started
the newspaper and the first newspaper took us a month
to do it, so you can imagine how fresh the
news were since the beginning. My dream was integration. So

(05:33):
I decided okay, we will have bilingual editorials. And so
I thought, how can I make people start placing advertising?
And I said, I need to get a couple of
companies that are powerful here. So I went to busy
with them and I told them I will donate the

(05:54):
full page in my newspaper. You don't have to pay
me anything. If you want to outreach the Hispanic community,
I will give you the alpha free. But you gave
me the ad totally ready and for them, what's a
good deal. So they said, okay, let's do it. My

(06:17):
next challenge came when I didn't have cash flow. So
I started thinking, okay, I will have to close in
his paper. And at that point I visited with late
Senator Pitte Suasu and I told him I have to
close in his paper and he told me, no, you

(06:39):
cannot do that. Classes that's the voice of the community.
So he told me how much money do you need?
And I said ten thousand dollars cash flow. So he
told me have you been rejected by any bank? And
I said yes, do you have a letter? Yes? I do,
and he said when does all we need? There is

(07:01):
an organization called Due to my cur Enterprise Loan. So
we can apply with the layer of denial due to
a business plan, and I'll help you to present to
the committee. I got the loan, and today that I
got the loan, I took up fur a copy of

(07:23):
the check and then at night I wrote an outline
of my vision of what will be a business center
resource for minorities where people will be able to get education,
how to write a business plan, how to apply for loans,

(07:44):
and at the same time I will team up with
banks to have source of capital available for them. In
two thousand and two, when preached so as of dying,
I decided that I wanted to honor his legacy and

(08:06):
I asked charauthorization to his family to use his name
and to create the Suaso Center nonprofit and we have
served between seven and eight thousand companies since the inception
of the center. One of those companies is actually a
change of nine supermarkets. It is owned by a Mexican

(08:31):
woman and we helped her with the first little store
and later on when she wanted to open the first
big supermarket in Latino, wore a team of eight people
are helping her to create all the business plan and

(08:51):
she got a lum for seven hundred thousand. Today she
gave employment to over five hundred people. For me, the
American dream is not about what the government does for

(09:13):
us or who is the president. For me, it is
about contributing our talents to work, be houses. It's about
alleviating the suffering of those needs. It's about being a
valuable part of the country that is now our home.

(09:39):
Is learning the language and not having fear of expressing
ourselves even if we have a strong accent. I consider
myself that I have fully lived the American dream. I
continue living the American the name.

Speaker 1 (10:04):
And you've been listening to Gladys Gonzalez, founder of the
Suazo Center, which helps Hispanic entrepreneurs create their own American dream.
Gladys was an executive at a bank and came to
the country and that expertise and experience just wasn't honored,
and so she was cleaning floors. But with patience and

(10:25):
with diligence, ended up living her own version of the
American dream. A great immigrant story. Here on our American
Stories