Eneida Román believes awareness is a key to increasing leadership and small business opportunities within the Latino community.

Román is the cofounder, president, and CEO of Amplify LatinX, a nonprofit that supports the state’s Latino community — from leaders to business owners — in various ways, such as its Small Business Program. Since the initiative launched in 2020, it has prioritized helping entrepreneurs stay open during the pandemic and assisted businesses with growth.

The entrepreneurs Amplify LatinX works with are connected with business coaches and put on a pipeline for the nonprofit’s certification, which is like the organization’s “seal of approval,” said Román. From there, the nonprofit works to connect certified businesses to procurement opportunities with local governments, private institutions, and community organizations.

All of it is done, Román said, to lift up Latino business owners.

“Latino prosperity is American prosperity. And so when you have a significant portion of the population that does not have equitable access to opportunities, that’s a missed opportunity for the economy at large,” Román said.

We talked to Román about challenges Latino business owners have faced, along with Amplify LatinX’s 2024 goals of boosting support for child care providers, increasing Latino participation in the upcoming election, and the group’s upcoming traveling exhibition showing the faces of 100 Latino leaders.

This conversation is part of The Power Network, an occasional series highlighting community leaders, advocates, creatives, and change makers who fuel the movement to address the racial wealth gap. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Boston Globe: What are some challenges that you’ve seen for the Latino-owned businesses you’ve spoken to?

Eneida Román: What we find is that there is a lack of culturally relevant resources for many of these business owners. When I say that, I mean that even if individuals speak English or can communicate in the English language, sometimes it’s comforting to have an organization that can provide culturally relevant information and that can potentially provide bilingual training and coaching so that they can grow their businesses.

We find that a lot of these businesses don’t necessarily have the access to resources and opportunities, but then even if they do, they don’t always have the access to capital. The data tells us that only 1 percent of investment goes to Latino-owned businesses. And that is not proportional to the growth of these businesses, because the data also tells us that 50 percent of all new businesses in the last decade are [owned by] immigrants, a lot of them Latinos.

BG: Why is supporting child care providers one of Amplify Latinx’s 2024 goals?

ER: In the vertical that we have for child care, we’re very intentional about meeting [child care providers] where they are, and if they’re just getting started, supporting them with those tools so that they know how to file their taxes properly so that they’re keeping their books properly, et cetera. If they are ready for maybe opening a center … we help connect them to opportunities if they want to purchase a property, et cetera.

[Child care is] a win-win-win because the first win is that we’re equipping … these child care providers with the necessary tools to run profitable businesses because that way they can transform their lives, their family’s lives, and the economy of their community. Second, by having a stronger child care ecosystem, we are going to create more employment. Then third, it supports the larger economy and the ecosystem because it makes industry more attractive.

BG: Emboldening Latino voters is also among Amplify LatinX’s 2024 goals. How is your organization doing this ahead of the 2024 election?

ER: We are making the community aware of the importance of being civically engaged and of elevating our voices. It’s all about making sure that we’re elevating the issues and also advocating for solutions that close these opportunity gaps.

BG: Is there anything else of note that you would like to share about what your organization has been working on this year?

ER: It’s really important that in order for us to support small businesses, a lot of them owned by people of color that have the potential to grow, that we are paying attention to these smaller businesses that … employ less than 10 people … making maybe less than a quarter million dollars.

We’ve been very actively advocating for that awareness so that we can have a codification of the term micro business so that we can have specific resources for those businesses.

The other piece that I’m really proud of is our visibility campaigns. That’s something that we’re launching now in the fall, and we call it the ALX100. That is essentially 100 Latino leaders across sectors doing extraordinary work that we elevate and that we give visibility to.

We actually do a traveling exhibition that goes across the state. It’s also really important that the next generation sees themselves in these leaders so that they’re inspired to follow their footsteps.

BG: For our last question, we like to ask: What does wealth mean to you?

ER: Wealth means having equitable opportunity for all the residents of Massachusetts, because if we have inequitable access to opportunities and inequitable access to education capital and everything that is available in Massachusetts, then we’re not as wealthy as we think we are.

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Lauren Booker can be reached at lauren.booker@globe.com.