Out of all the Fortune 1000 companies in the country, only 46 have CEOs who are women. Not one is Latina. Of course, Latinas face a lot of the same barriers in the corporate world that all women do. But there may be aspects of Latino culture that make it even harder to reach the top spot. For example – dealing with judgmental in-laws who don’t approve of women spending so much time out of the home, or internalizing the subtle codes of machismo that make it difficult for some Latina women to voice their opinions to male colleagues.

To help address these cultural issues, Josy Laza Gallagher – a Cuban-American and former Hewlett-Packard executive – got together with a few friends and started a network for Latina executives called Madrinas, Spanish for “Godmothers.” Marielle Segarra reports.

Marielle Segarra is a freelance radio reporter and an editor at CFO, a corporate finance magazine in New York. She’s also a former intern for WBUR in Boston and WRNI in Providence. She especially likes to tell stories about business, culture, public policy, and the economy. Marielle studied nonfiction writing at Brown and graduated in 2010. She grew up in Levittown, New York, home of Billy Joel and the suburb.