New generation rises at Hispanic chamber
The scene unfolded in the beautifully restored Monte Vista home that Congressman Henry B. Gonzalez once shared with his wife, Bertha, and their eight children.
A political fundraiser was under way, and Rep. Beto O’rourke, then running for the U.S. Senate against incumbent Ted Cruz, had the floor.
The host, Dr. Erika Gonzalez (who’s unrelated to the Henry B. clan) had gathered together successful, young Mexican American professionals interested in politics — people much like herself.
Unlike previous generations of Mexican Americans, who worked at the grass-roots level, those gathered in her home flexed political power by opening their wallets.
While they listened, an older, smaller Mexican American guard watched like proud godparents. From their vantage point, they saw in this new guard the fruits of their long labor.
For Gonzalez, 43, the gathering was just one moment in a busy life that includes a medical practice, two clinics, two research centers, and memberships and chairmanships in a wide swath of professional, political and civic organizations.
You’re going to be hearing more about her this year.
This month, she began a oneyear tenure as board chair of the San Antonio Hispanic Chamber of Commerce. Joining her at the helm is the chamber’s new president and CEO, Diane Sánchez. She replaced Ramiro Cavazos, now president and CEO of the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce in Washington, D.C.
It’s not the first time the local Hispanic chamber, the nation’s oldest, has been led by two Latinas. It happened once before, and there have been at least nine women board chairs.
Gonzalez’s chairmanship is likely to enhance what’s already an impressive personal brand. It will also broaden her impact, especially on medical issues. She’ll help the chamber see through a younger lens, and an already influential chamber is likely to be influenced by Gonzalez and the members she’ll draw.
She says she’s “giddy” about her new role.
Like Sánchez, Gonzalez has national and local leadership experience, as well as academic achievement and military service. Her family’s story is one of Mexican immigrant success.
Her parents were born in Mexico. Her mother, a dentist, ran a practice in Villa Acuña, Coahuila, just across the border from Del Rio. Her father retired from the Air Force as a physician’s assistant.
Gonzalez was born a military brat in Wichita Falls. By 6, she was at St. John Bosco Catholic School on the city’s West Side. She went to Health Careers High School in the Northside Independent
School District.
She graduated from St. Mary’s University, magna cum laude, in 1998 and from the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston in 2002.
Today she’s CEO, president and founder of South Texas Allergy and Asthma Medical Professionals. She has 30 employees.
A pediatric residency at Keesler AFB in Biloxi, Miss., was followed by a fellowship at Wilford Hall Medical Center at Lackland AFB. She left the Air Force medical corps after 10 years with the rank of major.
It left an indelible mark. “My love for civic service comes from my military service,” Gonzalez said.
It was the closest she has come to practicing what she calls “social medicine,” in which patients receive the most appropriate tests and treatment without regard to their ability to pay.
In private practice, she has treated patients on the South Side who lacked insurance coverage for the treatment they needed.
Bexar County has had the state’s highest rates of hospitalizations linked to childhood asthma. Gonzalez says child deaths in San Antonio related to asthma “were completely preventable.”
Gonzalez has taught at the Baylor College of Medicine and the University of Texas Health Science Center, now known as UT Health San Antonio.
Résumés like hers don’t always include civic work, let alone political involvement, and she acknowledges that “historically, physicians haven’t been engaged.”
She hasn’t operated that way. Her most recent work has been as chair of the Mayor’s Commission on the Status of Women, which has stood out in the last year for its strong voice and leadership.
She’s a director of Texas Lyceum, a bipartisan group that seeks to identify the state’s next generation of leaders, and she is a national committee member of the Latino Victory Project, a political action group that works to get more Latinos elected.
Most notably, last year she was named a Presidential Leadership Scholar, a 6-month program sponsored by the nation’s presidential libraries. The program selects mid-career professionals and puts them in the same room with former presidents and their staffs. The goal is to develop national leaders.
She was one of 58 scholars chosen. Too few have been from
San Antonio, she said, adding: “We need to change that.”
Her political involvement has been about pushing a progressive health care agenda and seeking more resources for women’s health and mental health.
Her first public act as chair of the Hispanic chamber will be to host legendary labor leader Dolores Huerta at the Feb. 11 Chairman’s Breakfast at the Pearl Stable. Tickets are $45.
Each new chair of the chamber selects a theme to reflect his or her agenda.
Gonzalez chose “The Power of Our Voice, El Poder de Nuestra Voz” to describe a platform that will focus on how small business owners can harness their power through access to capital, education and growth. Helping small businesses use digital technology is a goal, too.
Huerta might be viewed as an unusual choice, but Gonzalez doesn’t see it that way. At a critical time for Latinos, she thinks we need to hear from an inspirational voice about overcoming struggle.
“Now more than ever, in a state where such voices need to rise up, what better example,” she said.
Gonzalez is part of another bit of Hispanic chamber history. Its 2021 chair-elect is Denise Hernandez, an executive for True Flavors Catering/la Frutería.
For the first time in the chamber’s 91-year history, in which the majority of chairs and CEOS were male, one Latina chair will be succeeded by another.