About Us

How we came to be…

For over 25 years, Marvin taught and served as the lead full time faculty member for entrepreneurship at New Mexico’s largest community college in Albuquerque, New Mexico. During that time, he was actively involved with Albuquerque’s economic development community and worked developing start-up and existing businesses of primarily English speakers. The college’s administration asked Marvin, a professionally fluent Spanish speaker, to collaborate with the Albuquerque Hispanic Chamber of Commerce and other local economic development organizations to teach classes to Spanish speaking entrepreneurs interested in starting and/or growing their small businesses. His classes helped them clarify their business vision and spell out their mission – the steps they would take – to start their business. He helped them define their market, select a form of business operations and management, and project cash-flow.

Miquela joined Marvin teaching one group and found that two core areas of Latino life – family and culture – were consistently raised as concerns by the new entrepreneurs, but they were not yet addressed in any of the community-based business classes. We added those components to the training to help each participant understand how their core values and relationships inform their businesses and impact family, whether family members are directly involved in the enterprise or not. We adapted the Entrepreneurial Mindset of Taulbert & Shoeniger (2010) so that participants could examine and expand their approaches to problem-solving, business development, and money. We blended some Model Canvas questions from Osterwalder (2014) with our own Latino Biz questions. Pulling all the components together, we developed our book: The U.S.-Latino Entrepreneur’s Guide to Balancing Business, Family and Culture.

We now offer our services to you, customizing them to meet your needs. Our book serves as the anchor – the foundation – for the services we provide. Training, workshops, presentations, and consultations include the components of family and culture when helping entrepreneurs determine their needs and solutions.

Miquela Rivera, Ph.D.

Miquela Rivera is a licensed clinical psychologist, author, and public speaker. A bilingual (English/Spanish) native of Santa Fe, Dr. Rivera received her bachelor’s degree from New Mexico State University and her doctorate from Michigan State University where she was a Ford Fellow. She completed an internship at the Los Angeles Psychiatric Service and then worked in community mental health, an employee assistance program and private practice in Tucson, Arizona. Returning to New Mexico, Miquela has worked in private practice, early childhood administration (New Mexico Children, Youth & Families Department), and Head Start – providing regional technical assistance and training to grantees in New Mexico and Texas. Dr. Rivera served as clinical director and provided assessment and treatment of children, adolescents, families, and couples at Samaritan Counseling Center in Albuquerque and in private practice. She also provides grief support services. Miquela co-facilitated Latino entrepreneurship classes (Emprendedores) through the Albuquerque Hispano Chamber of Commerce. Dr. Rivera was a weekly self-help columnist with the Tucson Citizen newspaper for over 16 years, a columnist and feature writer for Hispanic Outlook in Higher Education and Hispanic Engineer Magazine. She published The Minority Career Book (Bob Adams, MA, 1991) and co-authored The U.S.-Latino Entrepreneur’s Guide to Balancing Business, Family and Culture (Kendall Hunt, IA, 2020). Dr. Rivera lives in Albuquerque.

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Marvin Lozano, Ed.D.

Marvin Lozano, Ed.D. is an entrepreneurial consultant who has worked as a bilingual commercial lender, business owner, and business college professor. He has extensive experience in domestic and international commercial banking (including lending and branch management), entrepreneurial consulting with community alternative lenders and chambers of commerce, and teaching/training students and faculty in higher education. Dr. Lozano earned a Bachelor of Science Business degree (with honors) from Arizona State University, a Master of Science in Management and Policy degree (while he was a teaching assistant) from the University of Arizona, and a Doctor of Education in Educational Leadership from the University of New Mexico.