Olga Camargo Melds Business Experience, Economics

A few years ago the building blocks of Olga Camargo’s career and education seemed to align in the direction that led her to her current position as head of Hispanic Research and Strategy at Mesirow Financial, a diversified financial services firm based in Chicago.

She has been with Mesirow for four years and was named to her current position in 2006.  In this job, she directs the firm’s outreach to the Hispanic community in the greater Chicago area and uses her expertise in multicultural marketing and business development.

Her enthusiasm for her work—and for her involvement in NABE as part of the Get Connected organizing team—are readily apparent as she describes her early work, research, and current job. Interviews were conducted in mid-August through e-mail and on the phone.

Camargo has won recognition for her providing mainstream business and economic roadmaps to the Hispanic community, including her recent selection to participate in the Chicago Council on Global Affairs’ 2008-09 Emerging Leaders Program.

Camargo says she finds the most challenging and interesting aspects of her job involve her effort to “create effective strategies that will help grow our market share within the Latino market.”  Her work for Mesirow requires “market research, relationship building, an understanding of the economy, and an open mind to be able to realize economic (business) opportunities.”

This melding of business smarts and economics has come about, in part, she said, from working with her mentor Diane Swonk, currently chief economist at Mesirow and former chief economist at Bank One.  They met at Bank One and Camargo said that Swonk initially hired her and eventually named her the production editor for Bank One’s Corporate Economics Group’s flagship economic newsletter written by Swonk.

Then JP Morgan bought Bank One and soon both Swonk and Camargo left; Swonk became chief economist at Mesirow and brought Camargo onto her economic team.   “Diane has shown me that it’s all about economics; she is good at connecting the dots” in dealing with a variety of business issues, Camargo said.  She works with Swonk, who served as NABE president in 1999-2000.

Combining Retail Experience, Communications, Marketing

The California-born daughter of Mexican immigrants, Camargo moved to Chicago with her family when she was three years old.  After completing her bachelor’s degree in marketing at the University of Illinois at Chicago, she decided to follow her mother’s example and start her own retail business.  “It’s such hard work and I learned so much, but after about five years, I cut my losses and closed the business,” she said.

At that point, she took a position as marketing senior associate for Bank One and worked to market the bank’s publications via e-mail, Internet, and other channels, while also spearheading production and design for the publications.  During this time, she returned to the University of Illinois to work on her masters’ degree in English.

Her graduate thesis—“How To Reach Chicago’s Mexican Market: A Case Study of Local Business Doing It Right”—was published in 2006 and has drawn a great deal of attention from government officials and business executives in other U.S. cities and other countries. The report was published by Mesirow is available on NABE’s website.

Get Connected Gives Members a “Buy-In”

Camargo said that one of the reasons she found the Get Connected initiative appealing is that it gives NABE members “a buy-in” and ownership in the organization.

Without the link to Get Connected and its benefits, which will soon include a mentor program, new members can feel lost and confused about how they might fit in to the organization, she said. “It’s like flying a kite and you’re down there all by yourself,” without a connection to the group, she said.

Since it was established last year, Camargo has been a member of the Get Connected organizing team, which is planning several activities for the 50th Annual Meeting set for Oct. 4-7 in Washington, D.C., plus other programs such as networking and mentoring.

“I think we have created a new pipeline for members that will encourage people to be involved and to reach out to others,” she said, adding that it also “motivates me to want to bring in others.”