A champion of the underserved
Altoro targets housing challenges of rural residents, people of color
Joaquín Altoro grew up in Milwaukee seeing families trapped by poverty and neighborhoods with no business development. Now, he is dedicated to being the banker of the underserved and underrepresented.
It was the mid-1990s and Joaquín Altoro was introduced to a businesswoman who operated dulcerias in Chicago with an estimated annual revenue of $3 million.
The woman wanted to open up a dulceria — or candy store — on Milwaukee’s Historic Mitchell Street, but needed a loan to finance her expansion.
Altoro prepared a package of documents and took her story to a local banker. He believed the woman had a compelling application because she had a strong business model that appealed to Latino culture.
The banker was underwhelmed. “I remember the guy saying, ‘A candy shop, Joaquin? Seriously?’ ” Altoro recalled. “It was such a disconnect between banks and understanding culture and understanding community.”
The woman never got her loan. She stayed in Chicago, and opened up more dulcerias there.
It was neither the first, nor the last, such experience for Altoro, and it gave him a goal: “Be a banker for anyone that is not given representation and exposure and attention.”
Altoro knew that he could only achieve his dream if he immersed himself in different communities and came to understand them.
In subsequent years, Altoro worked on various financial projects with the Hmong Wisconsin Chamber of Commerce, the African American Chamber of Commerce of Wisconsin, and the American Indian Chamber of Commerce Wisconsin.
“I could speak at a very nuanced level about any of these communities,” Altoro said.
Today, Altoro, 47, is the CEO of the Wisconsin Housing and Economic Development Authority (WHEDA). The state agency nurtures affordable housing initiatives and business financing products through homebuyer assistance programs, tax credits and other initiatives. As WHEDA’s head, Altoro oversees $3 billion worth of assets, 165 employees, and roughly $500 million in homebuyer loans.
“I have transcended from being a banker of the emerging, to the banker of the underrepresented and the under-resourced,” Altoro said.
Becoming a young entrepreneur
Altoro’s grandfather moved from Mexico to Milwaukee in 1918 to take work at a tannery in Walker’s Point.
The grandfather went on to have 17 children, one of which was Altoro’s mother. She was a Milwaukee
Public Schools teacher for 42 years; his father was a welder who lost his job during the exodus of manufacturing in the city. The marriage ended in divorce, in part because of tight finances.
Altoro remembers seeing families trapped by a lack of resources, neighborhoods with little to no business development, and gangs on the rise. “Poverty creates this additional layer of friction within families,” he said.
Altoro’s mother insisted he be well-educated and independent. She enrolled him in a math-andscience specialty middle school in the north side, with a predominantly Black enrollment. The experience “effectively changed” his life he said.
“It was a privilege of mine to get outside of my neighborhood, outside of my community,” he said. Altoro was one of the few Latinos at the school and said he started to understand the Black experience in Milwaukee.
Between the summer of his senior year at Rufus King High School and his first year at Marquette University, Altoro got a telemarketing job with a small mortgage firm. He would usually call wealthier suburbanites who were skeptical of the idea that a young half-Puerto Rican, half-Mexican man from Milwaukee could speak on financial matters like refinancing. And he disliked selling something he didn’t know enough about.
His boss paid for courses in being a real estate broker and appraiser at Milwaukee Area Technical College, and introduced him to an attorney who taught him about real estate titles. Soon after, he began to close mortgage deals.
He dropped out of Marquette University before the end of the first year, and started his own mortgage brokerage and loan business in the Brewers Hill neighborhood. He was 19.
‘Authentic and impactful investments’
Altoro stayed in the mortgage business until the housing bubble burst in 2007. He figured that playing a role in the decision-making process at a bank was the next logical step.
He landed a position as assistant vice president of community lending for Associated Bank in December 2009.
“I ended up explaining to the bank the value of a person like me because I was a Latino,” he said. “But my connection wasn’t just in the Latino community.”
Around 2012, he met Town Bank CEO Jay Mack at a meeting of the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce of Wisconsin. The two hit it off over a cup of coffee and Altoro became the vice president of commercial banking the following year.
Altoro was given the task of expanding the bank’s operations from Waukesha County to Milwaukee. “It was amazing (to have) a CEO that trusted me and allowed me to make authentic and impactful investments in community,” Altoro said.
During his time at Town Bank, Altoro made equity investments into Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFIs), which provide lending to communities typically underserved by the financial system.
One of those CDFIs was the Hmong Wisconsin Chamber of Commerce, which was headed at the time by the current assistant deputy director of WHEDA, May yer Thao. Thao said Town Bank’s investments “elevated” the Chamber of Commerce’s ability to provide microloans to Asian-owned businesses around the state.
And the Hmong chamber received more than just bank dollars.
Altoro had Town Bank representatives sit on the chamber’s board and its loan review committee. They enrichened the chamber’s ability to provide clients technical assistance so the chamber could better help businesses market themselves and keep their finances in order.
“He always collaborated with other organizations to really bring people together to accomplish what I think is quite a bit of redevelopment in Milwaukee,” Mack said.
During his time at Town Bank, he served as a Milwaukee city plan commissioner, further enriching his understanding of the diverse needs in different city neighborhoods. And he completed a long educational journey, earning a business degree from Cardinal Stritch University.
By the time Altoro left the bank in 2019, Town had $2 billion in assets and 25 branches, including multiple locations in Milwaukee. That was up from $500 million in assets and seven branches when he started in 2013.
‘I’m going to just be myself’
Two years ago, Altoro received a call from Gov. Tony Evers’ office, asking if he was interested in being the head of WHEDA.
“I remember driving to Madison and saying, ‘You know what? I’m going to just be myself.’ I’ve already spent 25 years in this game,” Altoro recalled.
During the first meeting, Evers asked what he knew about rural communities. Altoro described a talk he attended on health care access challenges in rural communities, hosted by the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago in Wisconsin Rapids.
“It was probably one of the largest slices of humble pie that I was ever delivered,” Altoro said, reflecting on the realization that rural challenges were as great as urban challenges. “I was slapped in the face with reality.”
After Evers nominated him for the WHEDA job, Altoro told wary Republicans from rural districts that he was committed to underserved communities, regardless of whether they were urban or rural.
He was confirmed by the state Senate unanimously.
During his time so far at WHEDA, Altoro has tried to implement the lesson he learned early on, and make a difference for the under-resourced. The agency’s Rural Workforce Housing Initiative, for example, is trying to address the state’s shortage of rural housing that is both affordable to workers and close to their jobs.
Altoro has also put Thao in charge of fostering a diverse and inclusive workplace culture at WHEDA. This has meant holding workshops and speaking events about the communities the state agency serves.
In October 2019, Altoro joined the National Council of State Housing Agencies, a consortium of the leaders of every states’ and territories’ housing authorities. In 2020, he was elected as the atlarge member on the executive committee.
As a member of the executive committee, Altoro and other state leaders are creating a national agenda to address disparate homeownership rates in communities of color and rural communities.
“I’m challenging us nationally. I’m trying my hardest to innovate around: How do we have impact?” Altoro said.