Giving credit.
José Quiñonez: Traditionally society thinks our poor people are just ignorant, they're dumb. They're doing everything wrong. That never really squared with my reality.
My name is José Quiñonez. I'm the founder and CEO of the Mission Asset Fund. What we're trying to do is to help improve the financial lives of low-income immigrant families so that they can get a loan to buy a car, a mortgage, they can get a loan to start business.
As an immigrant myself, I came to this country when I was nine. I came here undocumented, so I know what the reality is like to be in the shadows. With the small business owners, for example, and they have very limited access to capital and all they want is just an opportunity.
When we started the mission as a fund over 15 years ago now, we were clear about our mission. The question was how to do that. So we brought a team together of young people.
Team member: What is staff engagement looking like?
José: Putting the best technology in the service of poor people. We were we're constantly innovating. We're constantly changing. Going from a local organization rooted in the Mission District in San Francisco to being a national player. It is quite the leap.
We were able to sort of expand at a blink of an eye because we have the support of TriNet. We've now served more than 90,000 people with emergency grants, with credit building loans.
I kind of feel like we're just getting started.
Annie Leibovitz: José, he's really like a hero. He's an amazing man.
I knew these were going to be in environmental portraits. I really thought about how important it is to find the place that will resonate. It was a decision I made that the table was really his tool.
And they're right out that window is people walking by the bus. You know, it's the Mission district. I just felt like she was on the street. You know.
José: For a person like myself who has been at the margins of the world to get that type of attention of somebody like her, to be her muse for a half a day. I'm just completely in awe. This is a moment that we have been working towards trying to make the invisible visible.
