Rosa Santana Dreamer, Visionary, Trailblazer
Toyota’s Golden Girl
By Gloria Romano-Barrera
“When you are a visionary and have the passion and
drive to succeed, you are going to succeed in
anything you do,” says Rosa Santana, Founder and
Chief Executive Officer of the Santana Group; a group of companies
providing innovative outsourcing solutions to organizations across
all industries.
Santana had been working at Kelly Ser vices, a Fortune 500
Company, for 17 years making substantial financial impact. In 1998
Santana joined Westaff, Inc., a staffing organization, and in 2002,
downsizing there led to new opportunities for Santana. With the help
of her eldest daughter, Lisa Navarro-Gonzales, she founded
Integrated Human Capital (IHC) in the U.S. market and also opened
her cross-border company, Workforce de Mexico, in Ciudad Juarez,
Mexico. After three successful years, she expanded to Austin, Texas.
In 2005, she participated in a mentoring program where she learned
Toyota was expanding to San Antonio. Without delay, Santana opened
a small office hoping Toyota would take notice. At this time, her
youngest daughter, Nicole Navarro-Velesiotis, joined the company.
Later that year, Santana attended Toyota’s Opportunity Exchange
and has diligently attended for the last 13 years. In 2014, Toyota
in troduced Santana Group’s Forma Automotive LLC as the company’s
first Hispanic woman-owned direct Tier I supplier. Today, Forma
Automotive supplies fully assembled beds for the award-winning
Tacoma truck.
“People do business with you because you have integrity and
deliver exceptional results,” shares Santana. “People are going to
find you and will want to do business with you.”
The daughter to a single mother of five children, Santana
immigrated to the United States from Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua,
Mexico, at the age of 5, speaking no English when she settled down
with her family in El Paso, Texas. As Santana grew up, her mentors
an d role models were her mom and grandmother. Her mother, Josefina,
worked as a housekeeper at a hospital and then at a nursing facility and
ensured she provided for Santana and her siblings each day.
“I recall very vividly what it was to have a mother who worked all
the time, but she gave us a lot of love,” she states. “Mom always
said ‘I work this hard so that you guys can do better’.”
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