The ASU Hispanic Business Student Association was founded at a time when Hispanics were just beginning to receive opportunities previously denied to them. According to the association’s website, it was “organized in 1974 as the Chicano Business Students Association. The organization was renamed the Hispanic Business Students Association in 1979. The association’s goals are to provide educational opportunities to Hispanic students. opportunities, career options in business, and interaction with students who have different but common interests.”
We spoke with Dr. Luis Olivas, founder and advisor of the association and ASU professor emeritus, about the association and its history. Michael Trejo, a former ASU student, talks about his experience with the group and what it meant to him, calling Olivas “Dr.” ah”
“I really needed to find a home on campus, and that quickly became the Hispanic Business Student Association…The culture of the organization took me right away. I found a place to be. Once the organization was operational, ASU also had a very distinctive element of community service, which Dr. O guaranteed. And it’s like everyone is trying to find their place in that big place,” Trejo said.
Olivas became a role model and mentor to Trejo, writing him letters of recommendation that helped him get into Harvard and get an internship on Wall Street.
“There was no Latina presence in the business college. I don’t remember the first five or six years of having any Latinas or Latinas in business classes, but from the time I arrived in 1979, it was… It started to evolve,” Olivas said.
Olivas said the program is unlike any other in the country and, despite its success, has not been replicated at other universities.
Olivas recently made history by having a chair named after him, making him the first Latino or Latino to have a chair named after him at a top-ranked business school in the country. He became a person.
“When you’re a professor at a university, every university has an endowed chair, and that endowed chair ends up overseeing leaders and scholars who are well known for their work. , you start to see a chair that’s more important, and you look at that chair and you think, “One day I might sit in that chair, less than 5% of people get to sit in that chair, but it’s named after me.” I want to get a chair,” and I say, “I want to get a chair.” “I’m really humbled and honored,” Olivas said.
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