Spotlight: Glamis Haro
It’s 2019, aboard the Queen Mary in Long Beach, California. A petite woman with warm eyes and a kind smile is receiving an award from the Small Business Association. She is receiving the award for New York State Star Advisor of the Year. She had already been the NYS Advisor of the Year for the two previous years. Her name is Glamis Haro, and she’s the first woman and Latina from New York City to receive the award.
It didn’t take this award for me to know what an inspiring woman and amazing advisor she is, because she has been advising me on my business for the past seven years. Glamis is a veritable dynamo, always working on new projects; financial webinars, lectures, and seminars, and always making time to meet one-on-one with her clients. On my third meeting with her, I sat in her office, fresh from a divorce, and unsure how I would support myself. I couldn’t help but be emotional. But she didn’t let me wallow. “Don’t give another second of your life to this man.” Because in dwelling on regrets, we lose sight of possibility. That was some of the best advice I’ve ever gotten, and it came from a woman who got some similar tough love years beforehand.
There are so many ways that you can taste the sour side of life. But we need to shake it up and dust it off, and get going.
She came to the United States from Ecuador when she was 26 with her three-month-old son. She was married, and her husband had come to the States before her. Because she didn’t know the language or the culture, her memories are that everything was uncomfortable and strange, and certainly not home. She wasn’t even able to cook here because all of the ingredients that she was used to using were impossible to find. And even though she had an accounting degree in Ecuador, she soon realized that her experience and education would not be honored here, and she would have to start over. When her son was old enough to go to school, she took a job assisting the elderly, mostly to practice her English skills. She related how one of the women asked her why she had moved to the United States. When she explained that she wanted a better life for herself and her child, the woman said, “Glamis, you either come to another Country to get kicked or be kicked, so what are you going to do? If you want to kick, you need to put yourself in school.”
Glamis is not a woman to be kicked. She didn’t allow herself to remain overwhelmed at attempting higher education, and soon attained her Bachelor’s degree, followed by a Master’s Degree in Public Administration with a focus on fraud and loss prevention. From there, she went on to work as a lender at a micro-business lending firm and then a credit union in New York City, all while raising her son and adopted daughter. But she knows that there is no way she could have done this alone. She feels lucky to have had a supportive husband and a network of friends that helped each other, a community that included people from every background in a neighborhood of Queens, New York, where over 800 languages are spoken. She related that it was the other women in her neighborhood that made it possible. They all helped each other with money and through caring for each other's children.
While working as a small business lender, she began to understand the mistakes that many business owners make when it comes to their finances. She eventually decided to parlay this knowledge and expertise into providing support to other immigrants who wanted to make a different life for themselves. She determined that working as an advisor at the Columbia-Harlem Small Business Development Center would allow her to affect the most change. And so she began advising in 2013. She achieved her goal of creating a positive impact on diversity in small business, and she does indeed positively impact others. Particularly this year, when every small business in the Country has been scrounging to figure out how to apply for the SBA loans due to COVID. Her days are made up of trying to offer encouragement to people watching their dreams and businesses fail and still trying to maintain hope. But she gets up every day and does just that. And just last week, one of her webinars on business finance attracted over 800 attendees. Next month, with SBA's support, she’ll create a series of webinars on finance, all in Spanish.
Meanwhile, she is very proud of her children who have gone on to have successful careers of their own, and she is battling empty nest syndrome by keeping herself busy. She continues to learn and improve her skill set and is currently working on a post-masters advanced business certification through Columbia University. For years she has supported female-run enterprises the world over through Kiva and other micro-business lenders. She is excited to offer whatever help and advice she can to the women who come to us through Enable Mothers. Glamis is truly the one doing the kicking.
