Harnessing opportunities through leadership
Monika co-founded Altura Capital in 2005 to allow institutional investors and strategic partners to invest in high-performing small and diverse businesses that supply value-added goods and services to corporate America. In her 30-plus year career, Monika has focused on offering significant returns to investors while delivering valuable economic impact to communities.
In 2012, guided by her conviction that small and diverse businesses needed much stronger financial solutions and access to corporate markets, Monika co-founded Small Business Community Capital, one of the few Latina-led SBIC funds in the United States. SBCC and Altura are playing a pivotal role in developing an ecosystem of entrepreneurs, investors, advisors and corporations working together to harness opportunities. In 2020 Monika Co-founded the Altura EOZ strategy, one of the few Qualified Opportunity Zone strategies focused on operating companies.
Monika sits on the board of directors for companies including Cidrines, Coastal Painting, 9th Wonder, and is a board observer at Lippe Taylor. She also serves on the board of the Stanford Latino Entrepreneurship Initiative (SLEI), where she teaches a capital seminar; the Hispanic Heritage Foundation; the United States Hispanic Chamber of Commerce (USHCC) and the USHCC Foundation, which she chairs; and serves as a Capital Advisor to the Billion Dollar Roundtable. She is a fellow member of the Aspen Latinos in Society program and the author of a chapter in the book “Advancing U.S. Latino Entrepreneurship.”
Monika and the firms she leads have won numerous awards for their work building financial capacity and strong, 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 Hispanic Heritage Foundation Award in Business, the highest honor for Latinos by Latinos.
She has an MBA from Columbia Business School in New York and a J.D. from the Universidad del Rosario in Bogotá, Colombia.
Monika is a trusted advisor to many CEOs, corporations and government agencies, through which she lives her deep belief in the power of collaboration to build stronger communities and companies.