Female Disruptors: Tina Castro of Avivar Capital On The Three Things You Need To Shake Up Your Industry
An Interview With Candice Georgiadis
Don’t be afraid to fail. — I’ve noted several times in my career when I needed a nudge from mentors or colleagues to take risks that could also have high personal rewards. More generally, we’ve seen at Avivar the importance of taking risks when working on the frontier of driving social change to advance priorities not yet widely accepted. These include cultivating a focus on investing in fund managers and founders of color or edtech solutions targeting benefits to low-income students. Taking the risk of being on the frontier means that Avivar may not always attract the largest volume of investor dollars in the marketplace. But over time, we have seen these priorities and investment strategies gain traction, thereby amplifying the social benefits.
As a part of our series about women who are shaking things up in their industry, I had the pleasure of interviewing Tina Castro.
Tina is a Managing Partner and co-founder of Avivar Capital, bringing over 20 years of experience in the fields of finance and investment management. Tina co-leads the firm’s overall business activities and serves as an impact investment advisor to Avivar’s clients providing guidance on the development and execution of impact investing portfolios and funds. Prior to founding Avivar, Tina was the Director of Impact Investing for The California Endowment (TCE) and prior to that worked in the Investment Management Division of Goldman, Sachs & Co.
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dig in, our readers would like to get to know you a bit more. Can you tell us a bit about your “backstory”? What led you to this particular career path?
I am the daughter of Cuban refugees. My family came to the US to escape persecution and to find opportunity. As far back as I can remember, I watched my grandparents and my parents work hard to not only find opportunity but to create it for our family and for others. My grandfather worked as a cook at the Music Center Restaurant in Los Angeles while my grandmother would prepare cantinas to help feed recently arrived Cuban refugees. My parents each worked multiple jobs to ensure our family could live in a nice, safe neighborhood with good schools. Their hard work and sacrifices ensured that I grew up with access to opportunities that so many others in my position aren’t always lucky enough to have.
Their example is the bedrock of my work ethic today and the fuel that feeds my fire to pay it forward by helping to create opportunities for others with the work we do at Avivar Capital. It’s ironic that my career led me to finance. Starting out, I couldn’t tell you the difference between a stock and a bond. It was access to opportunity, and a little luck as I was graduating from my first Master’s program, that landed me my first real job as an Analyst at Goldman Sachs. There I quickly learned the difference between a stock and a bond and so much more. After eight years and another Master’s degree (an MBA this time), I found my calling in impact investing. It provided me an opportunity to combine my personal passion for helping others with my professional experience in building wealth through the capital markets. It was also a chance to use the capital markets to ignite an equitable future for all. I couldn’t have dreamt of a better way to live up to the example my family set for me.
Can you tell our readers what it is about the work you’re doing that’s disruptive?
Disruptive thinking is about thinking differently and challenging the traditional ways of doing things. The work we do at Avivar is disruptive because it challenges the traditional way capital markets operate — from who receives capital, to who makes the decisions about capital allocation and even to how decisions about capital allocation are made. We do this work to bring down persistent barriers that prevent equitable access to opportunity for all.
Our thinking is different at Avivar because we approach all the work we do with an eye towards social equity — racial, gender, socioeconomic or otherwise. We work to advance equity in how we approach advising our clients; sourcing, underwriting and monitoring investments; interacting with the communities we serve alongside our clients; and recruiting, hiring and developing our team as well as cultivating our own culture. We do it because we believe it is a moral and business imperative. Studies have shown that companies in the top quartile of racial/ethnic and gender diversity are 35% more likely to have above median financial returns. Other studies have found a significant positive correlation between racial and gender representation on boards and both return on assets and return on investment. Disrupting the capital markets to create greater access to opportunity is better for business, better for the economy, and better for communities and families.
Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?
Mistakes are rarely funny at the time they’re made and usually only become amusing in retrospect after time has provided some perspective.
When I was first starting out, I had an opportunity to join a foreign exchange trading company. The catch was that the opportunity came up shortly before I was supposed to start my first Master’s program. In order to accept the position, I would have to postpone my Master’s program and turn down the financial aid package I had been offered. I genuinely believed this would be a great growth opportunity and decided to take the risk — I called school and told them I would not be attending. I poured myself into the job, learning everything I could about currency trading. Members of my family even chose to invest through the firm. Two days after my Master’s program began — without me because I had accepted this position — we discovered that the firm and its principals were a complete fraud. The FBI arrived onsite, ceased operations, confiscated everything, and arrested the principals. They soon discovered that all the capital invested through the firm had been syphoned off by the principals for their personal use and all the investors had lost everything they had invested. I was devastated. Not only had I been deceived and given up a real opportunity to earn a Master’s degree along with the financial aid to pay for it, I had been part of a complete scam that injured people financially, including my own family members. I had to decide whether I was going to wallow in my failure or pick myself up and do something about it. I did what I needed to do to ensure the scam artists would be brought to justice — and they were. At the same time, I walked into the office at school, owned my mistake and asked for my place back in the entering class and for my financial aid package to pay for it. I was immensely fortunate that they welcomed me back and gave me the opportunity to complete the Master’s program.
I learned that failure does not have to be fatal. You can stumble, you can fall, you can crash and burn. But if you’re willing to own your mistakes, try again, and work hard, you can turn failures into opportunities.
We all need a little help along the journey. Who have been some of your mentors? Can you share a story about how they made an impact?
I’ve had many mentors along the way — some who have passed through my life briefly but have had an outsized impact on my trajectory and others with whom I’ve had close relationships over many years.
As an Analyst at Goldman Sachs, I worked with an older gentleman who took an interest in my professional development. Our personal backgrounds couldn’t be more different. He was an older white guy well into his career who had studied finance and, unlike me, seemed like he totally belonged at Goldman Sachs. I was a young Hispanic woman, the daughter of refugees, at the start of a career with zero background in finance. But I worked hard. I tried to be the first to arrive in the morning and the last to leave; I tried to learn my job and the job of other analysts; and I studied to get my securities licenses as soon as I could. When I told him I was studying to take the GMAT and thinking about pursuing an MBA, he checked in with me regularly about my progress. After months went by and I still hadn’t yet taken the exam because I was afraid I’d fail, he came to my desk one day. “Do you know the difference between you and her?” he asked, pointing to an executive sitting a few desks away from me. “She has an MBA. Go take the exam,” he continued, then walked back to his desk. Despite my fear of failing and proving I didn’t belong at Goldman Sachs, I took the GMAT, and did well enough to gain admission to UCLA Anderson School of Management. Without the older gentleman’s push get an MBA, my career would have taken a very different path.
Years later, a very dear friend, mentor, and my current business partner, Lisa Richter, gave me another, much-needed nudge. After years as the Director of Impact Investing at The California Endowment, I was considering venturing out to do something more entrepreneurial but once again, the fear of failure made me pause. And this time, with a two-year-old son, the stakes were much higher. Lisa spent the time to not only discuss but show what was possible. She came to my home and walked through her own consulting business, explaining in detail how she’d gotten started, as well as her clients, contracts and financials (of course, while protecting confidentiality). By the end of the day, I gained the confidence to resign my comfortable position at The Endowment and to start Avivar Capital. A year after Lisa’s visit to my house, we merged our firms and, nearly a decade since, have grown Avivar into the firm it is today.
In today’s parlance, being disruptive is usually a positive adjective. But is disrupting always good? When do we say the converse, that a system or structure has ‘withstood the test of time’? Can you articulate to our readers when disrupting an industry is positive, and when disrupting an industry is ‘not so positive’? Can you share some examples of what you mean?
I generally think of disrupting an industry or a system as being positive when it leads to better outcomes for more people and as being ‘not so positive’ when the opposite happens. However, depending on where you sit amid that disruption, your perspective may change. For example, while the use of advanced technology in the classroom has given more people access to education, improved engagement and learning, and made personalized learning possible, it has revealed the yawning digital divide between schools in affluent communities and those in lower-income communities. While technology’s disruption of education isn’t necessarily bad, but it deepens the need to address the inequities through investments and thoughtful policy.
Can you share 3 of the best words of advice you’ve gotten along your journey? Please give a story or example for each.
One, take advantage of opportunities when you can because you never know if/when they’ll come around again.
When I was offered the position of Director of Impact Investing at The California Endowment (TCE), I was told the offer was contingent on the Board of Directors’ approval of the strategy. My first responsibility was to help the Foundation prepare for and make the pitch to the Board. If the Board didn’t approve the strategy, I would be out of a job.
In order to accept the position at TCE, my top choice, I needed to turn down another job offer that had more certainty but wasn’t nearly as interesting. Although the job at TCE came with much greater risk, it was an amazing opportunity I wasn’t sure would come around again. Fortunately, it all worked out. The Board approved the strategy, I spent five years with TCE, which gave me the experience and knowledge to co-found Avivar Capital.
Two, don’t be afraid to fail.
I’ve noted several times in my career when I needed a nudge from mentors or colleagues to take risks that could also have high personal rewards. More generally, we’ve seen at Avivar the importance of taking risks when working on the frontier of driving social change to advance priorities not yet widely accepted. These include cultivating a focus on investing in fund managers and founders of color or edtech solutions targeting benefits to low-income students. Taking the risk of being on the frontier means that Avivar may not always attract the largest volume of investor dollars in the marketplace. But over time, we have seen these priorities and investment strategies gain traction, thereby amplifying the social benefits.
Three, when you do fail, don’t be afraid to try again.
Over the years, I’ve learned that perseverance and practice are the cornerstones of success. Whether it is in perfecting a financial model, better targeting Avivar’s services to meet investor needs, or better understanding the type of individual who can thrive as part of the Avivar team, we operate with a continuous improvement philosophy, and that means constantly trying new things.
We are sure you aren’t done. How are you going to shake things up next?
We are deepening our focus on two areas: corporations and portfolio monitoring/accountability of both financial return and social impact.
Since the deaths of George Floyd and far too many others, corporate America has made major financial commitments to the nation’s communities of color. Avivar knows how challenging, yet essential, it is to ensure that these financial resources create long-term, transformational benefit for the communities they are intended to serve. Avivar is expanding our engagements with corporate partners to achieve this objective, but there is much work yet to be done.
Avivar works hard to help its clients move from idea to action on impact investing. A huge focus in our work is helping investors understand how they can bring greater alignment between their values (their ideas) and their investment holdings (which can help to advance their values). However, to know that this is working, we must monitor and report on the financial and social performance of investments. The ability to do this is a real pain point in the field of impact investing which still needs better, more effective tools. We have been excited to create the Avivar Impact Investment Monitoring System (AIIMS) to help investors track social impact alongside financial returns, as well as see when social or financial performance fail to meet expectations. Then we can address any issues that may need attention to improve results. We believe that AIIMS can help corporations new to impact investing ensure their investments deliver the intended benefits. It can also help experienced impact investors simplify the process of monitoring and reporting on the social and financial returns of their multi-million-dollar impact investment portfolios.
In your opinion, what are the biggest challenges faced by ‘women disruptors’ that aren’t typically faced by their male counterparts?
‘Women disruptors’ face a combination of both external challenges and internalized self-limiting behaviors that men likely don’t face as often. There are broadly accepted social norms for women’s behavior and that generally doesn’t include being “disruptive.” A woman who disrupts by thinking differently is often considered insubordinate, bitchy, difficult to work with, etc. However, a man who does the same would be considered innovative, cutting edge, forward thinking, etc. In addition to external pressures, women internalize the social norms that can lead to self-limiting behaviors like the impostor syndrome — ‘I don’t know what I’m doing and it’s just a matter of time before everybody else knows it too’; an insatiable need for perfectionism — ‘everything I must be perfect or it won’t be good enough’; and misguided modesty — ‘good girls don’t boast.’ At Avivar, we’re thrilled to have a team of brilliant men and women who excel while fostering a shared culture of humility and learning.
Do you have a book/podcast/talk that’s had a deep impact on your thinking? Can you share a story with us?
The success of Avivar Capital is fueled by the caliber of our team. While we made some missteps in our early days in building the team, we learned important lessons about the qualities and characteristics we now unwaveringly look for in teammates. Those lessons were crystallized for me when I read the book “Grit” by Angela Duckworth. She argues that exceptional achievement comes from a combination of passion and perseverance. She describes passion as a singular focus on a goal you care deeply about and perseverance as a resilience and desire to work hard for what you’re passionate about. Grit — the passion and perseverance to ignite an equitable future for all — is the fuel that drives our team at Avivar.
You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. 🙂
Ensuring that every child can access and benefit from a quality education.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.” –Theodor Roosevelt
The quote describes the kind of life I want to live — I don’t want to live life on the sidelines, I want to be the woman in the arena fighting hard for what I believe in and fighting hard to create opportunities for others.
How can our readers follow you online?
This was very inspiring. Thank you so much for joining us!
Female Disruptors: Tina Castro of Avivar Capital On The Three Things You Need To Shake Up Your… was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.