By LOIS KINDLE
Liz Gutierrez wakes up every morning with the same purpose in mind. She will find a way to move low-income people out of the cycle of poverty and effect change in their underserved communities.
“My life’s work has been in pursuit of creating thriving communities where all kinds of people have the opportunity to live, grow and improve their quality of life,” she said. “I myself have lived in two worlds, as an immigrant and then, later, as a United States citizen.
Born in Santiago de los Caballeros in the Dominican Republic, Gutierrez knows a life in poverty. But she wasn’t meant to stay there, thanks to her mother, Altagracia, who left her husband and two daughters behind to come to the United States in the late 1960s. Paving the way for them to follow, the former unpaid social worker and missionary landed in New York, then found her way to a living-wage job in a textile mill in Lawrence, Mass.
Gutierrez’s father, Zachariah, an auto mechanic, immigrated next, leaving the girls in the care of their grandmother and extended family. They followed him in 1970, when Gutierrez was 6, and her sister, Yzelva, 11 months older.
At age 18, Gutierrez moved with her family to Tampa, where she graduated from Leto High School in 1983. She attended about 18 months at Hillsborough Community College and was briefly married, before returning to Lawrence to finish her education in a dual-college program at New Hampshire College, now known as Southern New Hampshire University. She graduated in 1992 with bachelor’s and master’s degrees in community economic development.
“I was very fortunate to get a job in the community working for a year with the Hispanic Week in Lawrence cultural organization, planning the weeklong Semana Hispana Festival, which continues to be very important to this day,” Gutierrez said.
While in Lawrence, she volunteered with a number of organizations, including the Greater Lawrence Ecumenical Area Ministry, and worked with the low-income Latino community, evangelical churches and other groups there and throughout Massachusetts. ‘
“The focus was to integrate the different communities in the area in support of the Hispanic community,” Gutierrez said.
In 2003, she returned to Florida to be close to her family again and worked for a couple of different nonprofit organizations in Tampa.
She recalled when her mother moved to the state, there were only low-wage cleaning jobs and mistreatment of those who did them.
“Given my values, experience and aspirations, I came to the realization that Florida doesn’t provide opportunities for people with no formal education who have transportation issues and language barriers,” Gutierrez said. “Life can be very difficult for this population, especially its women.”
So she set her sights on what she could do to change the situation.
“That’s how the idea for the Enterprising Latinas came about,” she said. “I did extensive research to find organizations in the state helping women move out of the poverty cycle,” she said. “There were none.”
LUI RODRIGUEZ PHOTO
Liz Gutierrez, 59, the founder and CEO of the Enterprising Latinas, began life in poverty in the Dominican Republic, immigrated to the United States in 1970 and became a U.S. citizen. Her entire life has been devoted to moving low-income people, especially women, out of the cycle of poverty and effecting change in their underserved communities.
The vision takes shape
Gutierrez founded and incorporated the Enterprising Latinas in 2009, then started operations in 2014, after researching the kinds of organizations programs that worked in this country and abroad.
Recognizing the social inequities driving the wage and wealth gap for women, the 501(c) (3) organization is dedicated to “creating pathways of opportunity for Latinas in Tampa Bay by teaching [them] new skills, creating networks of mutual support and advocating for innovative solutions to promote economic mobility and equity.”
On an annual basis, the Enterprising Latinas serve 2,000 people through its Wimauma Opportunity Center and 300 individual women who receive one-on-one mentoring.
The CEO sees her own personal path mirrored in those of the women she helps.
“There is no way I would be where I am today without the generosity of people who loved me, cared for me, taught me and showed me how with actions beyond words,” she said.
Gutierrez is described as a deeply caring person, a natural strategist who’s unconventional, creative and politically savvy. Throughout the ebb-and-flow of her life, she’s managed to keep her grounded principles and be guided and defined by them.
“Liz has turned the lessons of her life story into a vision to improve underserved communities and the lives of women,” said Illeana Cintron, Enterprising Latinas deputy director. “She’s relentless in pursuit of that purpose.”
