MBN USA

January 17, 2023

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Mantilla’s expertise to help companies grow faster brings powerful engine of change

By Brenda Matamoros

As managing partner for Altura Capital, Monika Mantilla has spent the last 25 years building financial capacity for scalable entrepreneurs in underserved communities.

She has been a capital advisor to the Billion Dollar Roundtable Inc. for the last 12 years. Mantilla helped develop a powerful theory of change to align corporate supplier diversity needs with capable diverse entrepreneurs and patient capital.

“We estimate that market opportunity to be close to $600 billion in potential value creation if these three players (corporations, diverse entrepreneurs and capital providers) align and work together to harness such value,” she said.

Altura also works closely with many industry associations that advocate for diverse business owners including the National Minority Supplier Diversity Council Inc., the United States Hispanic Chamber of Commerce and the Stanford Latino Entrepreneurship Initiative and the Hispanic Heritage Foundation. Mantilla sits on the board of the latter three.

 In 2006, she was invited by the U.S. House of Representatives to present views regarding Latinos in financial services as users and providers. Her mission became clear.

“It was then that I created a commitment to help build financial capacity in minority communities to enable business owners to maximize their growth potential,” Mantilla said. “A lot of work still awaits us, but I know the demographics shifts that are happening in our country require that all communities become active economic players and contributors. Meritocracy and access to opportunity is the biggest strength of our country.”

Impact investor

Mantilla said her primary professional dedication as an impact investor is being a financial and social engineer, striving to deliver financial solutions for institutional investors to achieve strong financial returns, while helping promising entrepreneurs to scale up their businesses, or transition ownership or pursue acquisitions.

“We provide capital and strategic support to small and middle market businesses across our country – with an emphasis on diverse-owned businesses ­– in four verticals: business services, consumer, manufacturing and health care,” she said. “Investing in them and helping them grow and succeed is our passion. These times of crisis and opportunity require all the support we can provide to small business and their ecosystems to advance our communities and our economy, especially those largely underserved yet with high potential.”

Mantilla recognizes that underinvestment in women and minority-owned businesses by peers in the private equity and private debt community, including the Small Business Investment Company (SBIC) program, represent a tremendous opportunity. In 2018, minority-owned businesses received only 4.8% of SBIC financing and women-owned businesses received only 2.2%.

“Fifteen years ago, I led and co-wrote a white pape7r about Hispanics in financial services. It was an attempt to map out what needed to happen for Hispanics to step up to their role in the asset management arena. We have experienced great progress but at the same time we are still behind in numbers and institutional support when it comes to Hispanic asset managers, [Minority Depository Institutions], community banks and [Community Development Financial Institutions] owners or managers, and the overall assets we manage,” Mantilla said. “However, I believe the incredibly rich entrepreneurial strength of our community will allow for significant Hispanic money managers and financial institutions to flourish, and [Community Reinvestment Act funds], financial federal agencies and institutional investors can and should play an important role.”

In 2012, Mantilla became the first Latina to receive the Hispanic Business Award by the Hispanic Heritage Foundation. In her acceptance speech, she said, “the dream that we could be architects of our own solutions,” and that statement continues to follow her thinking today.

Six years ago, she wrote a paper titled “What we need to do about capital.” In it, she attempted to design the architecture that was needed to significantly advance the capital agenda in underserved communities. Her ideas around this subject have evolved but, in some ways, continue to be the same, and they include to provide capital to the prepared and capable entrepreneur, driven by discipline and clear principals; help grow the company’s business; facilitate its path to success; and open opportunities with corporate America and the government. She said these can be achieved with the support of effective business ecosystems.

Mantilla has participated in numerous convenings, including the USHCC Legislative Summit and its annual convention, to discuss closing the $1.4 trillion parity of capital gap.  In 2020, she contributed to the book “Advancing U.S. Latino Entrepreneurship,” which is about the fastest-growing segment of businesses in the country. She has also taken part in the Aspen Latinos in Society working group.

She said there is an incredible market opportunity that diverse- owned businesses hold, especially when they align with corporate America and patient capital, which firms like hers provide.

Just among the members of the Billion Dollar Roundtable, the opportunity to scale, convert and divest corporate assets is immense. 

“We are excited about the work ahead as we continue to align corporate supplier diversity needs with great entrepreneurs that we can back financially, and we can all win together and build the strong and sustainable diverse suppliers of tomorrow,” Mantilla said.