Women's History Month Featured Leader: Romana Bañuelos

In March, we’re featuring an influential woman every day in honor of Women’s History Month.
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Today we’re celebrating:

Romana Bañuelos

Businesswoman and U.S. Treasurer (1925 – 2018)

• Thirty-fourth treasurer of the United States, serving from 1971 – 1974)and first Hispanic U.S. treasurer
• Owner of a multimillion-dollar Ramona’s Mexican Food Products in Gardena, California
• Born in Miami, Arizona during the Great Depression and deported to Sonora, Mexico, where she learned to farm and cook with her family
• Returned to the U.S. at age 18 with her two sons and worked as a dishwasher and tortilla maker until she saved enough to start her own tortilla factory in downtown Los Angeles, which became the largest processor of Mexican food by 1990
• Opened the Pan-American National Bank in East Los Angeles in 1963, with the mission of bankrolling Latinx people who wanted to start their own businesses in order to help them gain political influence