Monika has dedicated the last 20 years of her life to her passion: pursuing societal transformation through entrepreneurial success by providing capital and expanding opportunity to promising entrepreneurs, all of which can bring significant returns to investors and economic development impact. Monika is also the Co-Founder and Managing Partner of Small Business Community Capital.
Altura Capital is an investment management firm that provides institutional investors and strategic partners the opportunity to invest in and scale high-performing small and diverse investment firms and businesses, that supply value added goods and services to Corporate America. SBCC is an SBIC Impact fund with $147 million under management that provides debt and equity capital to small and mid-sized companies with $1 million plus Ebitda, focusing on women and minority owned firms and entrepreneurs located in LMI communities.
SBCC and Altura are playing a pivotal role in developing an ecosystem of entrepreneurs, investors, advisors and corporations working together to harness opportunities in these markets.
During the last recession, under the leadership of Monika, Altura provided valuable asset management, manager of manager and programmatic architecture, which included participation in the creation and overseeing of the CPP and PPIP programs, in facilities that managed north of $5.4 billion dollars, for both government and institutional investors. Lessons from management in turbulent market conditions led to Monika’s conviction that small and diverse businesses needed much stronger financial solutions and market architecture including ecosystems and access to corporate markets, which led to the creation of Small Business Community Capital, one of the very few Latina led SBIC funds in the country.
Monika and the firms she leads have won numerous awards for their work building financial capacity and strong and scalable businesses in minority and underserved communities. In multiple years, Latino Leaders Magazine recognized her as one of the 101 Most Influential Leaders in Hispanic U.S.A. and one of the Top 15 Latinos in Finance. In 2010 she became the first Latina to ever receive the HHF Award in Business, the highest honor for Latinos by Latinos.
Monika sits on the Board of Directors for private companies Pasteleria Cidrines and Coastal Painting Company. She also serves on the Board of the Stanford Latino Entrepreneurship Initiative (SLEI), the Hispanic Heritage Foundation, the United States Hispanic Chamber of Commerce (USHCC), the USHCC Foundation, which she Chairs, and the Capital Advisory Board for the Billion Dollar Roundtable (BDR).
Monika has an MBA from Columbia Business School, New York, J.D. from the Universidad del Rosario, Bogotá, Colombia.
Jay has worked for 31 years in the investment industry, and has worked for more than twenty years in private equity, international investment banking, global financial markets and portfolio management at major firms in New York.
He has extensive experience in investment analysis and research and has been recognized by leading polls as one of the top analysts on Wall Street. He is a regular commentator on international financial markets and investment strategy.
Prior to SBCC he co-founded UniWorld Capital L.P., a $60 million Private Equity fund that invests in lower middle market companies in the United States. Prior to UniWorld, Jay founded Discovery, a boutique investment bank, focusing on the Hispanic Market. Discovery held responsibilities across the spectrum of products within that asset class, including research, investment banking and asset management. He created the first Hispanic index and covered public and private Hispanic companies in the U.S. Prior to that, he was a managing partner and founder of Suala Capital Fund. This private equity company specialized in buyouts in Spain led by Ana Botin, CEO of Santander of Spain. Jay’s career at Suala followed his work for Santander Global Advisors (SGA), Santander’s asset management arm. There, he was responsible for portfolio management and equity research in emerging markets, particularly focused on those of Latin America. Previously, he served as managing director, head of emerging markets equity research and chief Latin American strategist at Santander’s Investment Banking division. He was responsible for building Santander’s equity research business, which achieved Institutional Investor’s top three quality research ranking – the first time ever that Santander was ranked — in just one year.
Prior to Santander, Jay served as director of equity research for Latin America at Salomon Brothers. He was personally ranked “runner-up” by Institutional Investor in the telecommunications sector. Jay also was recognized as one of the top four analysts by Bloomberg’s Analyst Scorecard, in which he competed with analysts from all countries and sectors. Prior to joining Salomon, he worked as an analyst at Smith Barney, first in the healthcare sector and then covering Latin America. He is on the Board of Altura Capital, Cidrines, Coastal, EarthLab, MedX Air, and Lippe Taylor.
Jay holds a Master in Finance (MSF) from Boston College and a B.S. in Civil engineering from the Andes University in Bogotá, Colombia.