
Promerica Bank is located on the ground floor of a gleaming new skyscraper in downtown Los Angeles. It looks like any polished, corporate bank. And that is exactly the point. Maria Contreras Sweet has positioned her bank to help Hispanic businesses grow to be a seamless part of corporate America. After a career that included a term as Secretary of Business, Transportation and Housing of the state of California and founding a private equity fund, she knows what makes the business world run: capital. She is now making that crucial element as accessible as she can to the Hispanic community. One of the businesses that's grown with the help of a Promerica loan, El Alteno foods, a food distributor, invited us to shoot in their large, immaculate warehouse. Then they offered us a tasting of their products: pork rinds, Mexican queso and Mexican Coca-Cola. They all tasted incredibly good. It was great to see the flip side to all the controversy over immigration, Hispanic companies bringing new growth and delicious products from across the border.