Patty Juarez, BS 94 – Becoming ‘The People’s Banker’

Sep 14 2023 • 40 mins

To celebrate Latinx Heritage Month, the OneHaas podcast welcomes Patty Juarez, the executive vice president and head of Hispanic and Latino Affairs at Wells Fargo Bank.

Patty found her passion for finance and banking at an early age, growing up in Mexicali, Mexico, watching her father run his business. After moving to the U.S. at age 11, education became a top priority for Patty and her siblings. When it came time to apply for colleges, Patty knew Haas was the school for her.

She and host Sean Li discuss her childhood in Mexico and how her life changed after moving to the U.S., the work she’s done at Wells Fargo to increase capital access for minority business owners, and how she got her nickname of “the people’s banker.”

*OneHaas Alumni Podcast is a production of Haas School of Business and is produced by University FM.*

Episode Quotes:

What it was like to leave Mexico at a young age

As a sixth grader, I felt like it was the end of the world, like moving away from my birth country. Even if it was just across the border, really a few miles away, it just felt like a huge change. Of course, you know, you leave your friends behind and you start a whole new world in the U.S.

Where her passion for finance began

I always knew I wanted to be a banker. It's almost like since I was a kid, I was the bank. Monopoly, I was the bank. If we played like little store, I was always the bank. I always handled the cash. And I always had money. I would save my money from birthdays and things. I would lend my money if my grandmother was short or whatever, and then she would pay me back. And if I'd give her $20, she'd give me back $21 or $22. And she taught me about interest when I was a little girl.

On her idea to diversify commercial banking

I just wondered how much more business we could get if we did it, right? If we actually came to clients in a culturally relevant way, if we recruited talent that looked like our client base, you know, how much more successful could we be? And that was the basis of me launching diverse segments, which really propelled my career to new heights at Wells Fargo.

How she hopes to make a difference for minority business owners

My goal is to have no access to capital gap, right? So that any business owner can get the financing they need and there's no bias in the decisioning process that leads to them getting turned down for a loan. And that's not gonna be something that's maybe gonna be solved in my lifetime, but I'm damn gonna try really hard to help it along.