Patty attends Hispanic Heritage Month celebration at the Downtown Los Angeles Wells Fargo History Museum, hosted by the Hispanic &
Latino Connection Employee Resource Network Greater LA Chapter in 2019.
They raised Juarez to be confident but humble and she took her role as an
older sibling extremely seriously. “It was really important for me to ensure we
honored the sacrifices made by my parents,” she says.
Her family arrived in California from Mexico when she was 11 years old
so her dad could manage a factory for an American company and assist with a
manufacturing facility in the U.S. While they lived near the Mexico-California border
and it was technically only a 20-mile move, the transition was a massive change for
the entire family. Juarez didn’t know fluent English and besides mastering the
language, she learned the importance of taking advantage of every opportunity. She
has called California home since.
Juarez enrolled at Haas School of Business at the University of California,
Berkeley. After graduating, she joined Wells Fargo where she decided to pursue an
executive MBA from St. Mary’s College of California. This meant juggling school,
work on evenings and weekends, working at the bank, and also raising her then
2-year-old daughter (she also has a son).
Juarez completed the bank’s Credit Management Training Program in 1998
and joined the Santa Clara office where she focused on technology clients.
“I was responsible for overseeing the portfolio as well as approving new loans
for companies with anywhere from $20 million to $500 million in revenue,” Juarez
adds. “After many years of being customer facing and handling relationships, the
next step for me was to manage an office.”
She was then promoted to credit officer, a position she held until she was
transitioned to regional vice president of the North Orange County office in 2010.
Juarez feels fulfilled in her current position as head of Diverse Segments
because Wells Fargo is delivering to diverse communities on many of the things
that matter.
“We do a lot of work to advocate for Latinos in the company and cultivate
our outside partnerships,” she shares. This includes a new partnership with The
Smithsonian to help with a $2 million grant to be used toward opening the National
Museum of the American Latino in Washington, D.C.
“It’s an important project that will help tell the story of our Latino clients
and team members and the enormity of the impact they have made to our
country,” Juarez says. “It’s really important to support the sharing of the countless
contributions that Latinos have made throughout our history. I look forward to the
development of the content of the museum, the design, the honoring of Latinos
who are so deserving. We all have to continue to contribute, I work really, really hard
to make as much of a positive impact as I can.”
She is committed to mentoring the next generation of leaders at Wells Fargo,
with a huge emphasis on cultivating and nurturing Latino talent. Juarez is president
of Hispanic & Latino Connection, one of Wells Fargo’s largest employee resource
networks, representing over 40,000 Latinos. Juarez also serves as co-chair of the
Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Council for Commercial Banking.
“Diverse leaders, including Latinas, are beginning to be seen as the next
generation of leaders. We’re really working on having Latina/o representation at the
high echelons of our company. We want to work on how we represent, how we
are fairly represented at the top and stewarding the many deserving and qualified
Latinos throughout the enterprise,” Juarez explains.
Patty and guests at Orange County Hispanic Chamber of
Commerce’s 2021 Estrella Awards at the Disneyland Hotel
in Anaheim, CA.
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