Hustle, Grit, & Community: How Two HHF Youth Awardees Took on Silicon Valley

Season 4 of the Fritanga Podcast kicks off with a full-circle conversation about hustle, identity, and building a fintech company rooted in community. Richie Serna and Emmanuel Pleitez—both past Hispanic Heritage Foundation (HHF) Youth Awardees—are now leading one of the most exciting startups in tech: Finix.

Richie Serna is a first-generation Harvard graduate from Santa Ana, California, raised by Mexican immigrant parents who instilled a powerful work ethic and value system that still guides him today. After a brief stint in consulting, he taught himself to code, moved into a hacker house, joined a Silicon Valley startup that later sold, and co-founded Finix in 2015. He now serves as CEO.

Emmanuel Pleitez, raised in East LA by a single mother from El Salvador, is a first-gen Stanford grad whose journey spans Wall Street, the White House, the U.S. Army, and venture capital. He is the founding managing partner of East Los Capital and now serves as Chief Strategy Officer at Finix. Emmanuel also served as Board Chair and is now Chair Emeritus of HHF, where he launched our national Code as a Second Language initiative and helped shape our leadership work—mentoring thousands, including many of us.

Together, Richie and Emmanuel are redefining what leadership looks like in Silicon Valley—while staying deeply connected to where they came from.

💳 About Finix:
Finix is a modern payments infrastructure company powering everything from taco trucks to billion-dollar brands. With no-code and embedded payment solutions, Finix empowers businesses to own their entire payments stack.
👉 Learn more at finix.com

🎙 This episode is packed with stories about mentorship, identity, risk-taking, and how the HHF ecosystem helped shape two Latino leaders building for the world—and each other.

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CONNECT: For questions or guest recommendations, email us at Fritanga@HispanicHeritage.org

TEAM:
Host: Antonio Tijerino
Executive Producer: Antonio Caro
Senior Producer: Connor Coleman
Producer: Ambrose Davis