Riqueza money at work
Lea Landaverde’s journey to financially empowering herself and others
KAMILA VARGAS-GONZALEZ | Dallas Voice Intern
editor@dallasvoice.com
For Lea Landaverde, conversations surrounding finances are taking place across states, Lyft rides and even her home. It seems inescapable, but she welcomes and even initiates those conversations with no complaints.
“I honestly feel responsible for [people’s] financial well-being,” she said.
Landaverde is a queer Latina wealth activist, a content creator and the founder of the Riqueza Collective, a financial educational platform for BIPOC, LGBTQ people and women that encourages building a healthy relationship with money.
“Finances have felt intimidating, and the goal with what I do and the content that I create is to help empower the next generations of wealth builders,” Landaverde states.
For the wealth activist, riqueza — or wealth — is more than how much money one has in the bank; it’s about having the ability to commit to building a healthy relationship with money.
Lea Landaverde
Landaverde holds 10-plus years of experience as a wealth manager, investment banker and personal finance consultant. She holds a presence in the financial industry and plans to continue and develop that presence.
The decision to pursue this profession has a weighty significance, and it came to be for a reason: She is the daughter of immigrants. She is the daughter of entrepreneurs. She is a first-generation daughter.
Landaverde has watched her parents navigate the United States for the first time looking for a chance to offer a better life for the family. While there were successes, there were also lots of struggles to overcome.
A young Landaverde observed both of her parents’ faces crinkle in confusion as she tried translating documents for them. She listened as her parents reluctantly stammered out that they were experiencing foreclosure on their home and losing their landscaping business during the 2008 recession, and she saw them rebuild their life and business, making it stable again.
“I learned a lot about being resilient,” Landaverde explains. “I took it into my hands to understand what it is to have money, invest and start a business. That’s when I started to take business and finance classes that led me to the path I’m on now.”
Her journey of learning how to handle money started with putting herself through college.
“I was always the only Latina, the only woman of color or queer individual in the room, and, honestly, that pushed me and ignited a fire within me to be that person that I wanted to see in the room,” Landaverde says. “I’ve used my knowledge, my experiences to empower the people. And I wish I could have seen that in my experience, but it wasn’t there.”
Landaverde continued to miss having a community of queer and Latina women behind her as she joined the finance workforce. Her identity and experiences influenced her career choice, and it was something that could not be ignored. Landaverde sought to unify her queer, Latina identity and background with her work.
Seeing her own parents’ struggle to be successful inspired Lea Landaverde to start The Riqueza Collective
“I didn’t want to be either more queer here or more Latina there,” Landaverde affirms. “It’s both of who I am.”
The Riqueza Collective started out as a business consulting side hustle. But it quickly transformed into a full-time gig for Landaverde when she realized she could focus on representing and educating marginalized communities. Her business grew into an accessible financial education opportunity that aligned its mission with her community’s needs.
“The most rewarding thing about running [Riqueza Collective] is being able to see the shifts that people make in their lives in order to be financially empowered,” Landaverde said. “I’ve seen people get out of debt. I’ve seen people save for emergencies and have a good safety net.
I’ve seen people start businesses after working with us.
“I’ve seen so much impact within people through this work.”
For more information on Riqueza Collective, visit riqueza.co or follow them on Instagram @riquezaco