Maywood native helps lead equity strategy for JPMorgan Chase

By David Steinkraus

WITH WILLIAM JARAMILLO, EXECUTIVE DIRECTORDIVERSITY EQUITY & INCLUSION AND HEAD OF COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT AND FINANCIAL HEALTH AT JPMORGAN CHASE.

William

Jaramillo

had a talent for the thinking that underlies banking, but he never thought of it as a career. He followed opportunities as they arose.

Today, at age 37, he is back in his native Chicago and leading part of the diversity, equity, and inclusion strategy for JPMorgan Chase. There are seven segments in the company’s strategy, each devoted to a particular diverse community. (Chase calls these centers of excellence.) Within the segment for advancing Hispanics and Latinos, Jaramillo is an executive director leading the financial health and wealth creation strategy and the community development strategy.

The segment for Hispanics and Latinos is one of the newer DE&I segments and started in2021. Jaramillo said he was the first hire made by Silvana Montenegro who heads the firm’s global efforts to advance Hispanics and Latinos.

Money Commit Ment

JPMorgan has committed to spend $30 billion by the end of 2025 to help close the racial wealth gap for Black, Hispanic, and Latino communities. The firm understands Latinos are its largest growing customer group, Jaramillo said. “Being proximate to this community is not just the right thing to do. It’s a business imperative because we are such a major contributor to the US economy,” he said.

Addressing the financial needs of Latinos means having people who can connect with Latino customers culturally and in the same language.

“I can’t speak for the entire Latino community, but from what I’ve seen, we need to trust the person we’re talking to,” Jaramillo said. “Let’s look at the banking systems in the countries where many of us came from — Venezuela, Cuba, Colombia. These are not necessarily trusted banking systems, so try telling my grandfather, my grandmother, to put your hard-earned money in the hands of a bank for your retirement 20, 30, 50 years from now.”

Helping Latinos also involves making people in the community aware of what resources are available, Jaramillo said. Latinos are growing businesses faster than any other community, but scaling is a problem he said. Without help, without the right infrastructure or systems, a business can’t make good use of capital it receives.. So senior business consultants working through the firm’s minority entrepreneur program can provide technical assistance and mentorship to small businesses to prepare them for their next step, he said. Customers may also be connected to outside resources such as community development financial institutions that combine federal and private money to invest in distressed or underserved communities.

Family Knowledge

Jaramillo is a first-generation Cuban, born in Maywood after his grandfather Arnaldo Ramon Garcia brought the family to the United States during the 1960s. Arnaldo had been a truckdriver in Cuba, worked briefly in a bakery when he immigrated to the United States, then started Arnie’s Trucking, “and that’s what he did until the day he died.”

As he grew, Jaramillo said, his grandfather always wanted him to help work on the trucks, but that wasn’t his interest or his talent. “What I could help with is going to the bank to set up his account. I have these memories of saying, ‘Grandpa, this is tax deductible.’”

Maywood was the definition of an underserved community, he said, and living in its push and pull meant college wasn’t his future when he graduated from high school. He delivered pizzas for a while, then went into business with his older and entrepreneurial brother Gerardo Robledo who started a real estate company and mortgage company.

At age 20, he said, they made a lot of money during the end of the subprime lending splurge. When the bubble burst, he did odd jobs, and then one day walked into the Melrose Park branch of Chase with his grandfather. He knew the people because it was the local bank, and the manager encouraged him to apply as a teller. Jaramillo worked his way up from there.

Now he draws on what happened in his own family. He was raised by a hard-working single mother, Delia Garcia, and neither she nor his grandparents had access tools to build wealth, he said.

“For me, helping her understand her finances differently, it’s like the completion of a full circle,” Jaramillo said, “and I think about all the moms out there, all the grandmas, all the grandpas, everyone out there who is thinking about their financial journey.”